Our educational mission is to provide diversified training in medical toxicology. Our fellows directly experience acute poisonings, adverse drug events, substance use, withdrawal, hazardous materials, terrorism preparedness, venomous bites and stings, and environmental and workplace exposures. They graduate experts in the prevention, evaluation, treatment and monitoring of illnesses from exposures to drugs and chemicals, as well as biological and radiological agents. They graduate prepared to work in clinical, academic, and governmental environments.
We aim to train future leaders in medical toxicology as educators, researchers, clinicians, and administrators, locally and at peer institutions around the country.
Our breadth of training provides our graduates with opportunities to pursue clinical and academic positions, pursue research, and obtain administrative positions at community, academic or governmental organizations including poison centers. We have a busy inpatient and outpatient clinical service and provide ample research opportunities.
We aim to provide a diverse experience for our fellows in order that they may pursue careers in many possible future work environments.
The fellowship program strives to broaden the scope of fellows' experiences. As an example, our medical toxicology faculty have spearheaded efforts to initiate an "Addiction Team" within UPMC to serve a patient population that is greatly affected by the opioid epidemic. Collaborating with colleagues from internal medicine, psychiatry, and addiction medicine, we created a team dedicated to treating this patient population. Moreover, in the past year, we have added more addiction medicine training to our curriculum to prepare our fellows to provide these services. This ensures that we continue to provide the richest and most diverse training to our fellows.
Goals are accomplished by:
- Recognizing the indications for admission to the medical toxicology service, either to the medical floors or to an intensive care unit.
- Developing an understanding of important clinical factors when obtaining histories and performing physical exams on toxicological patients.
- Selecting appropriate diagnostic studies and therapeutic interventions for medical toxicology patients.
- Learning how to access and utilize the resources available to the physician regarding toxicological patients.
- Developing skills to diagnose and manage patients with acute and life-threatening illnesses related to toxicological problems.
- Understanding the capabilities of and the resources through a regional poison center as applied to care of individual patients and patient populations.
- Mastering the differential diagnosis and management of toxicological patients.
- Developing the cognitive and procedural skills necessary for the recognition and management of a wide variety of emergent toxicological conditions.
- Acquiring a comprehensive database relating to those areas of medical toxicology that are particularly pertinent to the practice of clinical medicine.
- Applying information obtained from the medical literature and medical toxicology references to the clinical practice of medicine.
- Demonstrating and developing skills for providing evidence-based healthcare.
- Communicating effectively with other members of the medical toxicology team and poison control center, including attendings, fellows, nurses, aides, technicians and clerical staff.
- Developing skills to diagnose and manage patients through a tele-toxicology service.
- Fellows will collaborate with the program faculty and submit abstracts to national and international medical toxicology conferences and various publication outlets.
- The fellow will provide education through lectures and discussion to residents and fellows from a variety of specialties, medical students and Certified Poison Center Specialists (CSPIs).