Welcome to the Division of Respiratory Critical Care Physiology and Medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center!

Introduction
The Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology and Medicine maintains an active program of clinical, research, and teaching activities. The Division provides primary care and consultation in respiratory medicine for inpatients and outpatients.Clinical services offered by the Division include fiberoptic bronchoscopy, respiratory therapy, pulmonary function testing, integrative cardiopulmonary exercise testing, and sleep studies. The Medical Intensive Care Unit is under the direction of the Division, and Harbor-UCLA maintains an acute inpatient consultation service for the treatment of advanced or complicated tuberculosis. An integrative cardiopulmonary exercise physiology laboratory offers state-of-the-art evaluation of patient’s cardiopulmonary function during exercise. There is a two-bed sleep laboratory. The Pulmonary Referral Center with associated physiology laboratory is available for evaluation of patients referred for special consultation and/or special diagnostic procedures.

Research
Faculty, fellows, and other researchers are involved with activities centered in a 30,000 square foot research and teaching facility. The Division’s exercise physiology laboratories make it one of the world's foremost centers for exercise physiology research. Other facilities on the campus employed for particular investigational needs include the NIH-funded General Clinical Research Center, electron-beam computed tomography facility, imaging center , sleep physiology laboratory, intensive care unit, animal research laboratories, and vivarium. Faculty in the Division direct a unique Rehabilitation Research Center with a focus on innovative treatment strategies for patients with chronic disease. There is a major programmatic emphasis on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease research, including a 5-year NIH-funded multicenter research program in COPD.

The Division has a major focus of interest in the use of muscular exercise as a stressor of cellular respiration and the response behaviors of the cardiovascular and ventilatory systems. This allows the exploration of the limits and constraints of normal physiological function and also helps isolate the cause(s) of impaired cellular or organ function limiting work tolerance. Further, the recognition that a common manifestation of many chronic diseases is exercise intolerance has lead to physiology-based strategies to ameliorate exercise intolerance in patients with a range of diseases.

There are three laboratories devoted to human exercise studies in the Division. Each of these is designed and equipped to focus on a particular aspect of exercise analysis, such as clinical exercise testing, training and rehabilitation, and the analysis of dynamic physiological responses. Other human research is carried out in the main hospital unit, the Intensive Care Unit, or the General Clinical Research Center. Active collaborative relationships have been established with the Divisions of General Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Endocrinology, Nephrology, Hematology and Medical Oncology, and HIV Medicine, as well as with investigators at other institutions.

Teaching
The Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology and Medicine upholds a long tradition of individualized and in-depth teaching at all levels in the training programs at Harbor-UCLA. This extends from the clinical services to the research laboratory, the classroom, and the informal conferences and study sessions that form the framework of fellowship and research training. The Division has offered since 1982 a twice-yearly postgraduate course in Exercise Testing and Interpretation that attracts participants from around the world. Division faculty members and fellows have received awards for teaching from medical students and resident.

Fellowship Training
Please click here to visit our Fellowship Site for further information.

Applications and Additional Information
For Clinical Fellowships or for Research Fellowships (research without clinical training) in Respiratory Physiology and Medicine, please contact:

Kathy E. Sietsema, M.D.
Chief, Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology and Medicine
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
1000 W. Carson Street, Box 405
Torrance, CA 90509-2910
(310)-222-3801

Applications are accepted through ERAS, the Electronic Residency Application Service. Please obtain information and details about this process directly from ERAS