Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship

Welcome from the Program Director

Thank you for your interest in the Mary Washington Healthcare Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship.

We built this program around a simple premise: fellows who own their clinical experience from the first week of training become better physicians. At MWH, that is not a philosophy we aspire to — it is the architecture of the program. Our Medical ICU operates as a closed unit where each fellow functions as the primary team physician, carrying ten patients under direct attending supervision from day one. There is no transition period, no observation phase. The responsibility is real, the feedback is immediate, and the teaching never stops.

What makes this program distinctive is not any single feature — it is the combination. A three-fellow cohort means every case belongs to the fellow. Five faculty with national credentials in ECMO, interventional pulmonology, ERS editorial leadership, and pulmonary vascular disease means the teaching depth matches the clinical intensity. And a three-block interventional pulmonology curriculum — with EBUS, robotic navigational bronchoscopy, medical thoracoscopy, and endobronchial valve placement — means our graduates leave training as credentialed proceduralists, not just competent intensivists.

Fredericksburg is an extraordinary place to train. We serve a broad and complex regional patient population across the Northern Virginia and Rappahannock corridor — the breadth of pathology rivals what you will find at larger academic centers, in a setting where fellows are never anonymous.

If you are looking for a program where you will lead from the beginning, operate as a primary bronchoscopist before the end of your first year, and be known by name by every attending and every nurse in the unit — this is the program.

I look forward to meeting you.

Vinay M. Patel, MD
Program Director, MWH PCCM Fellowship
Medical Director, Pulmonology and Interventional Pulmonology
Mary Washington Healthcare
AABIP Board-Certified · Interventional Pulmonology