Pulmonary Disease/Critical Care Division Statement

Division Statement | Faculty

The ETSU Health, Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine is comprised of a team of outstanding clinicians dedicated to improving the lives of patients with lung disease. Our mission is to deliver excellent, efficient, state-of-the-art and evidence-based medical care to our patients, provide outstanding educational and training opportunities for students, residents and post-graduate trainees, and to promote and foster multi-disciplinary clinical and basic science research programs designed to improve our understanding of human health and disease with the goal of improving quality of life, preserving and restoring respiratory and sleep health.

The section participates in consultation service, bronchoscopy and critical care services at 2 regional medical centers, as well as the Quillen VAMC and the Johnson City Tennessee Tuberculosis Clinic. To complement the diverse array of patients seen in both inpatient and outpatient settings, the Division has a successful Sleep lab that offers full service diagnostic polysomnography.
In addition to patient services, the faculty oversees an ACGME approved three-year fellowship program that confers board eligibility in Pulmonary and Critical Care medicine. Most of our graduates have gone on to private practice but all have retained a desire to be involved in resident and student teaching based in part on their educational experience. The mix of clinical experiences and didactics provided in this program provides excellent training for the subspecialist in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

The Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Disorders Medicine is part of Internal Medicine Program of the Department of Medicine at the Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University. The Fellowship teaching program in pulmonary disease has been ongoing since 1980. There are over 46 graduates of the program located in 10 different states. The division was accredited by the ACGME in 1995 as a combined pulmonary/critical care training program. The majority of graduates who have taken the subspecialty board examinations in pulmonary disease and critical care have been certified. The training program is three years, preparing candidates for certification in both subspecialty boards of pulmonary disease and critical care. Two new fellowship positions are offered each year.

Our mission is to deliver excellent, efficient, state-of-the-art and evidence-based medical care to our patients, provide outstanding educational and training opportunities for students, residents and post-graduate trainees, and to promote and foster multi-disciplinary clinical and basic science research programs designed to improve our understanding of human health and disease with the goal of improving quality of life, preserving and restoring respiratory and sleep health.

Pulmonary/Critical Care Fellowship

Scholarship

The mission of our division is to improve the health of our citizens. Our special focus is to engage in clinical, basic and educational research addressing acute and chronic lung conditions and sepsis. Each of our faculty is involved in clinical scholarly activity in their special areas of interest. A pooled bibliography in excess of 150 publications support our divisions research interests. Areas of scholarship of particular interest to the faculty include, but are not limited to:

• tuberculosis
• septic shock

Our Faculty and Fellows publish scholarly activity that involves basic research as well as clinical research aimed at improving respiratory clinical care and sleep health. Dr. Elgazzars highly productive basic science laboratory focuses on basic molecular processes that can be translated to the field of inflammation, with a focus on severe systemic inflammatory processes like sepsis.