Neonatology FCE for Students

About our Facility:

The UMass Memorial NICU, located on the fifth floor of the Memorial campus hospital, is a 49 bed unit with 22 ICU beds and 27 step down cribs in our continuing care unit.  Three teams help run the unit: NICU A team is responsible for ICU patients (about 2/3 of the patient census), NICU B team is responsible for the CCU patients, and the NNP delivery team works in collaboration with both A and B teams to attend high risk deliveries and provide antenatal anticipatory consultation to high risk patients.

Functional Clinical Experience:

Our FCE at the UMass Memorial NICU is designed to help students improve their competency in neonatal care.  Over the course of this FCE, students will learn to examine a neonate, understand normal and abnormal neonatal physiology, learn the common disease processes in admitted neonates, learn to coordinate care in collaboration with a diverse, interdisciplinary team of healthcare professionals, learn to present your patients in rounds, learn about lactation issues and nutrition with the help of the NICU team, and learn to educate parents about their neonate’s care.  Your learning experience at the NICU will be both experiential and didactic.  Throughout your FCE you will participate in rounds, bedside exams, and discussions with other providers, as well as talks, grand rounds, and lectures, including resident lectures on Monday and/or Thursday, radiology rounds on Tuesdays, and fellowship lectures on Wednesdays.  You can choose to spend most of your time with the NICU A team or follow your patients to the NICU B team as their treatment progresses.  In both cases, you will have the option of attending high risk deliveries as well as antenatal consulations.  On this unit, some of the best experiential learning occurs in the off hours.  As such, we encourage FCE students to spend about one night on call per week.

For further information, contact:

Neonatology Office: +1 (508) 334-6206  Attn: Holly Diagneau

Dr. Sanjay Aurora: neonatologist, course director