We are very excited to offer an EMS fellowship of 1-2 years duration depending on the EMS Fellow’s goals and needs.

Central Virginia and VCUHS have much to offer in the way of a diverse and unique experience for EMS fellows. A large number of the faculty is involved with EMS at various levels including medical directorships, research, disaster management, tactical EMS, battlefield medicine, and education. There are four major ground based 911 systems in the region. All of them derive their medical direction from faculty in our department. VCU LifeEvac is the health system’s rotorwing transport service that provides critical care transport services for interfacility transports as well as 911 response fire and rescue agencies. LifeEvac works closely with the Virginia State Police Medflight service in providing medevac coverage to the region, and their medical direction comes in part from VCU’s Emergency Department.

VCUHS has an arrangement with the US Military Special Operations Medics Program in which VCUHS serves as one of their clinical sites. The EMS fellow will have an opportunity to work with this group and to travel to their base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina to participate in their training. Old Dominion and EMS Alliance (ODEMSA) is the regional council that the EMS Fellow will be involved with. This council covers 9,108 square miles, including 22 counties and six cities, and some 1.23 million residents. There are a total of 4,500 providers in five levels of state certification, including 1,050 at the Advanced Life Support (ALS) level. There are 79 volunteer and career rescue and fire agencies, including 66 ALS emergency patient care services and two air medical agencies. There are 16 acute care hospitals (with emergency departments) including one Level 1 Trauma Center and three Level 3 Trauma Centers.

The Medical Directors of the Fellowship and the faculty involved in EMS at VCU are very active in ODEMSA and serve in numerous leadership positions as well as on numerous committees. The Virginia State Office of EMS (OEMS), a division of the Department of Health, governs all of the EMS activities in the state. The regional EMS councils report to the OEMS. The state has an EMS Advisory Committee composed of all of the stakeholder organizations in the state. In addition, there is a state EMS Medical Direction Committee and a State Medevac Committee. The faculty of the EMS fellowship has an excellent working relationship with OEMS and as a result has access to their support, resources and data.

VCUHS and its Department of Emergency Medicine are involved in a remarkable amount of EMS activities at the local, regional, and national levels. As mentioned above, the emergency department provides on line direction to EMS providers in our region twenty four hours a day. Almost the entire faculty is involved in prehospital education either directly at the bedside, or through participation in the Center for Advanced Life Support and Critical Education.

Five of our faculty are medical directors for local EMS agencies and provide offline direction as well as participate in quality assurance and training not only at their respective agencies but at other regional agencies as well. In addition approximately one third of our 27 full time faculty have direct involvement in regional, and state committees and are actively involved with strategic planning, training and development of EMS in Virginia.

Dr. Dhindsa is the EMS Fellowship Director, and serves as the medical director for LifeEvac of Virginia, which is a rotor wing service that currently has three aircraft located throughout central Virginia. He is EMS fellowship trained and is active at the regional, state and national levels with EMS and air medicine. He also serves as the Associate Medical Director for Hanover County Fire and EMS. He is a member of the FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Team MD-TF1. In addition, he is actively involved in development of EMS education utilizing human patient simulators.

Dr. Ornato currently serves as the Medical Director for the Richmond Ambulance Authority, Richmond Fire and EMS, and Hanover County Fire and EMS. He is very active in EMS and resuscitation on the regional, state and national, and international levels. He is extremely active in prehospital research and EMS system innovation. Currently he serves as Co-Chair of the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC). The ROC consists of 10 North American clinical trial sites in the U.S. and Canada and a Data Coordinating Center. In addition, Dr. Ornato is one of the principals on a multimillion dollar HRSA bioterrorism training grant that is being utilized to train prehospital providers on how to deal with weapons of mass destruction and other mass casualty disasters. Through this grant the department of emergency medicine has been involved in the process of implementing the Basic and Advanced Disaster Life Support Courses in the state of Virginia.

Dr. Allen Yee serves as the full time Medical Director for Chesterfield County Fire and EMS. He has numerous areas of expertise including tactical EMS and disaster medicine. Dr. Yee is also a member of the Virginia DMAT team is very active in all aspects of EMS and serves on regional, state and national committees. He is also the medical director for the Virginia State Police/ Chesterfield County Medflight 1 operation.

Dr. Michael Gonzalez is heavily involved in disaster planning and management at the hospital, regional and state levels. He is also a member of the Virginia DMAT system and is involved at the state level in a number of planning efforts.

Dr. Ward, the Director of Research for the department is well published and active in the Virginia Commonwealth University Reanimation Engineering Shock Center (VCURES). This center has been the recipient of a number of large number of federal grants from Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health.

Of special note is the development of a unique program with VCURES, which focuses on advanced battlefield medicine. VCURES is one of two programs nationally, which provides clinical preceptor services to the U.S. Special Operations Command. The VCURES program is responsible for providing a rigorous hands-on clinical rotation for half of the U.S. Special Forces Combat Medic students. The EMS fellow will have a unique opportunity to assist in the training of these students and will be afforded the opportunity to spend up to one month at the Joint Special Operations Training Center in Fort Bragg, N.C to be exposed to and participate in the advanced methods used in the medical training of U.S. Special Operations Combat Medics.

The EMS fellow can choose to do a one or two year fellowship. The fellow will receive a faculty appointment and a competitive salary plus faculty benefits. The fellow will have the opportunity to enroll in the MPH, MHA, MBA,or MSc program during the fellowship. The fellow’s clinical workload will average approximately 12 hours per week.

For additional information, please, please submit a letter of interest and curriculum vitae to Dr. Dhindsa at hdhindsa@mcvh-vcu.edu .