Activities and Conferences
A Bi-Directional Process
The PCCM fellowship offers a robust educational curriculum, from a more traditional didactic, lecture-based format, to case-based interactive presentations, to “flip the classroom” sessions involving board-style questions and analysis of current literature.
Orientation
We launch the summer with an intensive orientation involving hands-on procedural and simulation-based education, taught by expert faculty and senior fellows. This also includes the Fundamentals in Critical Care Medicine series. We also start our twice weekly pulmonary “Boot Camp,” which runs throughout the summer and then regularly throughout the year.
Teaching Sessions
Fellows experience a variety of teaching conferences through the year:
- Critical Care Core Topic Lectures
- Pulmonary Morning Report Case Conference
- Pulmonary Procedure Didactics
- M&M
- Journal Club (Pulmonary & Critical Care)
- Radiology Rounds
Fellows will also have the opportunity to join many other non-teaching conferences to expand their pulmonary and critical care knowledge:
- Airways Disease Conference
- TB Conference
- Thoracic Tumor Board
- Critical Care Obstetrics Conference
- And More!
Hyde Conference
Because the best learning occurs through teaching others, fellows are expected to present roughly ten case-based literature reviews per year at our weekly City-Wide Chest Conference, held each Wednesday and attended by a broad range of PCCM faculty, faculty from other disciplines, residents and students, and our ancillary staff including respiratory therapists, advanced practice practitioners, and nurses.
This is an ideal forum for fellows to sharpen their presentation and teaching skills, subjects of professional development teaching sessions led by Program leadership early each summer. Hyde Conference is named after Dr. Dick Hyde, the founding father of the University of Rochester Pulmonology Division.
Local 
and National Conferences
Fellows contribute greatly to our educational mission by teaching residents, APPs, and medical students. In addition to our local teaching conferences, all fellows have the opportunity to attend one national conference per year in order to showcase their scholarship and learn from national and international leaders in the field. Many fellows also attend subspecialty-specific conferences both nationally and internationally in the area of their research.
Finally, we are active in the New York chapter of the American Thoracic Society, and fellows are encouraged to take a leadership role in the planning and administration of this conference.
Anthony Pietropaoli, MD
Associate Director, Adult Critical Care, Strong Memorial Hospital
Medical Director, Department of Respiratory Care, Strong Memorial Hospital
Medical Director, Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program, University of Rochester Medical Center
The University of Rochester Medical Center combines a broad array of renowned experts, laboratories, and research programs with an approachability, collaborative spirit, and friendliness that is hard to find in other major university medical centers. This easily permits our fellows to link up with research programs that align with their goals and interests.
When I walked through the doors of the medical center for my fellowship interview, something clicked, and I knew I was in the right place. I have stayed because that gut feeling never left. I think that has a lot to do with an energizing clinical and scientific dynamism, together with friendly and highly committed people who are here to do good work, and do it together.”