The WMed Department of Emergency Medicine offers a fully accredited, one-year fellowship in Emergency Medical Services with up to three slots available each year. Our curriculum is divided among four broad categories: Didactics, Administration, Prehospital, Clinical.
MSU-2 at the scene of a motor-vehicle crash in Kalamazoo County.
EMS home-call - 48 hours weekly - Flexible scheduling
ACGME required procedures list
Scene responses, Kalamazoo and Yellowstone EMS consults
Mass gathering experiences: Kalamazoo Marathon, Michigan International Speedway NASCAR race, Western Michigan University football and hockey games, Kalamazoo K-Wings Hockey games, Electric Forest music festival, Faster Horses music festival
Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Special Response Team
Michigan Region 5 Tech Rescue Team
Serve as supervisor for the residency field response program
iPad - FirstNet wireless plan - ePCR, navigation, dispatch
EMS polo, hi-vis vest, hi-vis jacket, and helmet
Field response program integrated into the county EMS system with strong partnerships with dispatch, fire, police and EMS. Kalamazoo County 911 monitors and dispatches our physician response vehicles. Here is an example of a medical call we were dispatched to (MSU-1 stands for Medical Support Unit-1 and is one of our physician response vehicles):
A disaster preparedness drill at the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport.
Our fellows actively engage in regional and state disaster preparedness activities and get the chance to plan, implement and evaluate exercises with various federal, state, and local agencies, as well as hospital systems, private companies, and volunteer organizations.
Kalamazoo County MCA is the coordinating agency for the 5th District Medical Response Coalition (5DMRC), one of the oldest such coalitions in the nation and cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a national model. The 5DMRC meets bimonthly and includes representatives from the nine counties in Southwest Michigan. Coalition members represent hospitals, EMS, emergency management, public health, long term care, tribes, and other healthcare / human service organizations.
WMed serves as the statewide coordinating organization for the National Disaster Life Support (NDLS) Program in Michigan. Our fellows complete Basic and Advanced Disaster Life Support Courses and have the opportunity to become NDLS instructors.
As part of our mass gathering component of the curriculum, our fellows participate in the planning, logistics, and medical operations at the Kalamazoo Marathon, the WMed MFR Capstone Day, and Western Michigan University football games, Additional mass gathering events: Michigan International Speedway NASCAR raceday, music festivals, MI-TESA, and regional full-scale exercises.
Our fellows respond to mass-casualty incidents within Kalamazoo County and neighboring jurisdictions. Some previous examples include, a tour bus vs. semi-truck collision, large apartment fires, a 190+ vehicle pileup on I-94, and multiple symptomatic carbon monoxide exposures at a local greenhouse.
Our fellows work approximately 40 hours a month as attending physicians at our two regional tertiary care centers – Ascension Borgess and Bronson Methodist Hospital -- to help maintain emergency medicine clinical skills. Both facilities are ACS-verified Trauma Centers, STEMI Centers, and Comprehensive Stroke Centers. Bronson serves as the region's burn center and pediatric hospital. Borgess maintains the local in-patient psychiatric ward. Our WMed students and residents rotate at both hospitals. Fellows serve as the supervising attending physician for our learners while on shift in the EDs. Together, these facilities see over 160,000 Emergency Department visits annually.
Additional teaching opportunities are found at the local community college's emergency medical services program as well as in WMed's 25,000 square-foot simulation center, which opened in the summer of 2014 and is one of the largest in the Midwest. EMS fellows have full access to the center to hone their own skills and to instruct students, residents, and emergency medical services personnel.
Dr. Joshua Mastenbrook with his poster presentation at a recent NAEMSP conference.
Our goal is to help you develop outstanding research skills by providing opportunities and resources to cultivate these skills. WMed employees have access to an immense collection of electronic databases, journals, and textbooks. Our team of medical librarians, data managers, biostatisticians, and IRB staff help to facilitate the research process.
WMed coordinates Michigan’s EMS Information System and houses the state EMS Data Manager. This means our fellows have access to more than 10 million EMS records and can conduct research under an ongoing state Health Department IRB-approved project. Fellows are also invited to join current faculty projects or develop a new project. Our department has successfully secured over $14 million in state and federal grants and is one of the few institutions to receive multiple EMS for Children Targeted Issues grants.
We encourage our fellows to attend and present at the annual meeting of the National Association of EMS Physicians. WMed provides financial support for travel expenses for presentations at regional, state and national meetings.
3 days per professional conference for research oral/poster presentation
Faculty
Our diverse faculty have unique niche interests, skills, and experience in air medicine, disaster preparedness, hazmat and fire service operations, tactical emergency medical services, mass gathering event medicine, rural and wilderness medicine, education, and system operations, among others.
