UW - Pulmonary Division

elcome to the home page for the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. I am proud to say that we have one of the strongest and largest Divisions of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the country. Since our Division was founded in 1965, we have grown steadily and now consist of 42 full-time faculty members. Our Division is deeply committed to the missions of academic medicine, including patient care, biomedical research, and education.

Patient Care
We provide the highest quality patient care for a wide spectrum of pulmonary and critical care illnesses. Faculty in our four teaching hospitals are nationally-recognized experts in asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, acute lung injury (including the acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS), cystic fibrosis, interstitial lung diseases, neuromuscular disorders, pulmonary hypertension, and the pulmonary complications of AIDS, as well as critical care medicine--the management of patients requiring care in an intensive care unit. In addition, our faculty are experts in caring for individuals with pulmonary complications of bone marrow transplantation and organ transplantation, such as heart, liver, and kidney transplants.

Our faculty are integrally involved in the lung transplantation program at the University of Washington and are also involved in providing lung volume reduction surgery to patients with emphysema. In addition to a chest clinic at each hospital, we also have many specialty clinics providing high quality outpatient care. These include a pulmonary fibrosis clinic, cystic fibrosis clinic, pulmonary hypertension clinic, pulmonary rehabilitation program, and neuromuscular weakness clinic. In addition, our faculty members provide primary and consultative care for the patients in the state-of-the-art intensive care units of the University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals. We are involved in many innovative and pioneering clinical research programs that allow our patients access to new developments in the treatment of pulmonary and critical illness.

Biomedical Research
Our Division’s research activities are diverse and yet we have tremendous depth in a number of important areas. We have established the Lung Biology Center at the University of Washington. The mission of the Lung Biology Center is to provide a nexus for performing, coordinating, enhancing, and stimulating basic research directed toward understanding fundamental mechanisms of lung development, repair, and disease.We have several other prominent research laboratories that also focus on molecular and cell biology. These laboratories concentrate on areas such as acute lung injury and defense mechanisms against pulmonary infections. We also have a long history and tremendous expertise in physiologic research concentrating on pulmonary vasculature and the coordination of ventilation and perfusion in the lung. We have a strong research program performing epidemiology and outcomes research that has focused on Acute Lung Injury and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in the past and is expanding into a number of other areas, including outcomes of critical care, end-of-life care, and cost-effectiveness research in both academic and community hospitals.

The University of Washington is one of the most highly funded academic institutions in the country and our Division contributes significantly in this arena. Over the last five years, our faculty has contributed an annual average of 20 book chapters and 90 articles to a wide variety of scientific journals, as well as 50 abstracts each year to national and international scientific meetings. Our faculty also contribute by acting as members of study sections for the National Institutes of Health and other research funding agencies. Finally, our faculty provide national leadership in such organizations as the American Thoracic Society and the American College of Chest Physicians.

Education
Our Division is strongly dedicated to the mission of education and training. We have an outstanding fellowship program that trains young physicians to be leaders in the field of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. In addition to learning the clinical skills of this field from nationally renowned experts, our fellows are trained in biomedical research and in educating future generations of medical professionals. Because of the broad research interests of our faculty, Pulmonary and Critical Care fellows can choose to develop research skills in molecular or cell biology, physiology, or clinical research. We have a combined training program with the University of Washington Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program, in which selected fellows are trained in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Occupational Medicine with an emphasis on occupational lung diseases. Our Division is also dedicated to training medical students, medical residents, and anesthesiology residents as well as paramedics, nurses, respiratory therapists, and other medical professionals. Our faculty members participate in Continuing Medical Education programs for other physicians in our state and around the country and the world.

Our Division is diverse. We are spread out among the affiliated hospitals of the University of Washington, including University of Washington Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center, the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in Seattle and Boise, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Yet we are a cohesive group that forms a single unit working toward our goals of excellent patient care, state-of-the-art biomedical research, and top quality medical education. I hope that the information in this web page is useful to you.