Children’s Medical Center Dallas opened its first Pediatric ICU in the 1960s under the direction of Dr. Theodore Votteler, a pediatric surgeon. The unit primarily served postoperative patients, with surgeons and anesthesiologists providing the bulk of care. Not until the recruitment of Daniel L. Levin, M.D. from the University of California San Francisco in 1975 did the Division of Critical Care come into existence within the Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Levin was at the time a neonatologist and a pediatric cardiologist. Dr. Frances C. Morriss, a pediatrician, anesthesiologist and intensivist already at Children’s joined Dr. Levin to open one of the first intensivist-run PICUs in the United States. Together they also wrote and edited the first textbook of pediatric critical care, A Practical Guide to Pediatric Intensive Care. This text was one of the most widely translated medical books in the 80’s and 90’s. As the pediatric intensive care primer for residents and general pediatricians, it was retitled Essentials of Pediatric Intensive Care in subsequent editions.  It has enjoyed multiple printings and established Dallas as one of the world centers of pediatric critical care. In 1977, the pediatric Critical Care Fellowship was established to train future pediatric intensivists, and has since graduated more than 75 fellows, many of whom have become leaders within the field.

Since its modest beginnings, the Division and its responsibilities have mushroomed. Today there are 19 faculty members and 13 fellows. Faculty and fellows care for patients in a general medical/surgical PICU, a trauma/neurological injury ICU, a cardiovascular ICU, and a level II ICU, each with its own specialized nursing staff. There are 61 total beds in the different units, making it one of the largest critical care services in the United States, if not the world. Admissions to those units totaled 2,645 patients in 2004. Patients with the full spectrum of critical illnesses are referred to the PICUs from throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mexico and Latin America. The Division maintains an active research program with faculty members pursuing a wide variety of interests, ranging from the molecular basis of myocardial dysfunction in sepsis, to nerve cell regeneration following traumatic brain injury, to the use of a genetically engineered protein to shorten the PICU course and hasten the recovery of children undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass.

The fellowship was developed using guidelines of the Society for Critical Care Medicine, the American Board of Pediatrics Subspecialty Board of Critical Care Medicine and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The program is approved by the ACGME for subspecialty training.