Program Director's Welcome
Thank you for your interest in the Cleveland Clinic fellowship program in Critical Care Medicine. As a program director, I am extremely proud of our commitment to training tomorrow’s leaders in critical care. We are dedicated to recruiting and training the world’s top physicians, welcoming individuals from all backgrounds and valuing the unique perspectives, experiences and contributions they bring. With one of the largest Medical Intensive Care Units (MICUs) in the U.S., we have created a unique environment for training fellows. Our team of educators is wholly committed to advancing the careers of our trainees through mentorship and effective teaching techniques.
Mission Statement
Mission Statement
We are committed to training physicians with a passion for clinical care, education, and research to become tomorrow's leaders in pulmonary and critical care medicine through excellence in patient care, scholarship, innovation and leadership.
We will accomplish this by:
- Providing world-class patient care and unparalleled clinical training
- Recruiting proactive visionary candidates with a variety of career goals
- Promoting individualized mentorship
- Supporting, protecting and guiding meaningful educational and research opportunities
- Innovating in education
- Teaching and role modeling character traits of effective healers and scholars, including communication, integrity, compassion, and teamwork
- Embracing quality and safety as a culture
Our track record of developing physician leaders is centered on our commitment to excellence in patient care, education, scholarship and innovation. We believe that a team based, integrated approach to patient care affords the best opportunities for learning, collaboration, and care delivery. Beginning in 2024, all Cleveland Clinic ICUs were unified under a new Critical Care Center model. This framework offers a host of opportunities for fellows to rotate, collaborate and specialize in a range of critical care disciplines. It also improves our ability to trial innovative processes, learn and employ best practices, and integrate a diversity of perspectives to improve the future of critical care.
Regarding education, our staff and fellows are committed to continuously improving how we learn and teach. Through flipped classroom experiences and new ways to interact virtually, fellows now have access to a wealth of resources and expertise which build on our prior successes. One example of this is our mechanical ventilator curriculum. Standardized Education for Ventilatory Assistance (SEVA®) is a standardized certification program in mechanical ventilation designed to help fellows gain a detailed mastery of mechanical ventilation theory and management. Another example is our recent integration of ChatGPT into our Pulmonary Artery Catheter training curriculum.
Our fellows are extremely productive academically. Scholarship is a central part of the culture here with fellows involved in an array of research topics. Popular areas of interest include, but are not limited to, ARDS, ECMO, sepsis, mechanical ventilation, point of care ultrasound, medical education and simulation, and informatics/big data.
From developing new procedural techniques to new devices and new ways of educating, the seeds of discovery are abundant among our fellows. We foster these opportunities through a broad network of expertise, teamwork and resources within and beyond the Cleveland Clinic enterprise.
Finally, we believe that hard work should be closely tied with a healthy body, mind and spirit. Our programs your personal wellbeing as a fellow. A few examples include paid travel to professional society meetings, robust health and retirement benefits, generous maternity/paternity leave programs, gym memberships, an annual stipend that can be applied towards an array of options and multiple opportunities for social and professional engagement.
The examples above are only a fraction of the exciting work our fellows and staff are pursuing. We would love the opportunity to meet you and to show you more about what makes Cleveland Clinic a world-class healthcare organization.
Facts & Figures
The Integrated Hospital Care Institute (IHI) at Cleveland Clinic, led by Dr. Raed Dweik, represents a pioneering approach to hospital-based care. Established in 2023, the IHI consolidates five key departments— Pulmonary-Critical Care, Emergency Medicine, Hospital Medicine, Infectious Disease and Anesthesiology—into a unified structure encompassing 12 divisions. This integration aims to enhance patient care by streamlining transitions between departments and fostering collaboration among healthcare providers. The IHI also encompasses two centers: Critical Care and Perioperative Medicine. These centers coordinate clinical, educational and research activities across the Cleveland Clinic Health System. The institute supports over 150 residents and more than 100 fellows across 14 specialties and subspecialties.
The IHI model reflects Cleveland Clinic's commitment to innovation in healthcare delivery, emphasizing integrated, patient-centered care. By uniting various departments and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, the institute aims to improve patient outcomes and advance medical knowledge.
Within the IHI, the Medical ICU is among the largest in the United States with 65 inpatient beds. Teams care for patients in a specialized format with 5 rounding teams inclusive of a dedicated procedure team and dedicated Liver, Oncology and ECCOR/ECMO teams. These units support our lung transplant and liver transplant programs, which are consistently ranked among the top 3 centers for transplant volume in the nation. Both specialize in high-risk transplant patients who are frequently turned down by other centers.
Members of our Interventional Pulmonology section perform over 3500 bronchoscopies annually and offer state of the art diagnostic and therapeutic options for patients.
Coupled with our clinical initiatives is a thriving research enterprise. Several faculty hold joint appointments in the Lerner Research Institute where they run NIH and industry-funded basic science labs investigating molecular and cellular mechanisms relevant to pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension and asthma. Numerous other members have participated and continue to lead major NIH-and industry-sponsored collaborative clinical trials networks including Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Clinical Research Network, Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL), Long Term Oxygen Treatment Trial (LOTT) for COPD and the Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation.
Leadership
Raed Dweik, MD, MBA is the Chair of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Chief of the Integrated Hospital Care Institute (IHI) at Cleveland Clinic. IHI is home to nearly 4,000 caregivers and a faculty of over 1,200 physicians and scientists in Ohio, Florida, London and Abu-Dhabi. The IHI at Cleveland Clinic is a unique model that does not exist elsewhere in healthcare. The IHI brings hospital-based services under one umbrella by bringing together five departments (Emergency Services, Hospital Medicine, Pulmonary-Critical Care, Infectious Disease and Anesthesiology) that are home to 12 divisions. The institute also has two centers (Critical Care and Perioperative Medicine) that are designed to organize the clinical, education and research activities of these services across the entire Cleveland Clinic enterprise. The leaders, providers, educators, researchers and caregivers of IHI work collaboratively with hospitals across geographies to innovate and reimagine the patient journey as we provide seamless access to our high-quality care and cutting-edge research to more patients in more locations in the United States and around the globe. Graduate medical education programs in IHI include over 150 residents and more than 100 fellows in 14 specialties and subspecialties in addition to an APP- School of Nurse Anesthesia and APP-ICU Fellowship. We conduct research activities across the spectrum of basic, translational and clinical research with over 650 IRB-approved projects supported by over 100 federal grants, 150 industry-sponsored trials and various foundation awards.
Dr. Dweik's clinical interests include pulmonary hypertension, asthma, chronic beryllium disease and critical care, and he regularly attends in the medical intensive care unit (MICU). He is board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonary disease and critical care medicine and has been listed in The Best Doctors in America since 2005.
Dr. Dweik is Professor of Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine (CCLCM) and has a joint appointment in the Lerner Research Institute (LRI) with continuous funding from the NIH since 2002. He established a Research Center of Excellence in Pulmonary Vascular Disease including a patient registry, a human sample biorepository and an animal model core. He was the recipient of the Cleveland Clinic Outstanding Innovation in Translational Medicine Award and a Third Frontier Award from the state of Ohio for his pioneering work in exhaled breath analysis in lung and systemic disease. He has published over 250 peer reviewed manuscripts and book chapters and serves on several journal editorial boards, National Institutes of Health (NIH) review panels and American Thoracic Society (ATS), American Heart Association (AHA) and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) committees.
Dr. Dweik is the recipient of many teaching awards including the Cleveland Clinic Distinguished Teacher Award from the Internal Medicine Residency Program for five times, the Teacher of the Year Award from the Pulmonary Fellowship Program and the Scholarship in Teaching Award from Case Western Reserve University. He is Director of the KL2 program of the Cleveland Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative (CTSC), a member of the admissions committee at CCLCM, and past chair of the Committee on Advancement, Promotion and Tenure (CAPT) at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Dr. Dweik has served on the Board of Governors, Board of Trustees and Board of Directors of Cleveland Clinic and chairs the system's Innovation Management and Conflict of Interest committee (IM&COI), the routine Capital Review Committee (CRC) and the strategic capital Advisory Team (AT).
Dr. Dweik is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP), the Royal College of Physicians of Canada (FRCPC), the American College of Chest Physicians (FCCP), the Society of Critical Care Medicine (FCCM), the American Thoracic Society (ATSF), the American Heart Association (FAHA), the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI), and a founding member of the International Association for Breath Research (IABR).
After receiving his medical degree from the University of Jordan Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Dweik completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Miami Valley Hospital and Wright State University in Dayton, OH. He completed his fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Cleveland Clinic.
Neal Chaisson is the Program Director of the Critical Care Medicine Fellowship in the Integrated Hospital Care Institute at Cleveland Clinic and the president elect of the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Program Directors. He joined Cleveland Clinic in 2013 after completing his fellowship in Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. His primary area of expertise is in the evaluation and treatment of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and pulmonary complications of congenital heart disease. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award from the Internal Medicine Residency Program in 2017. In 2019, he was awarded Critical Care Medicine Teacher of the Year. In 2021, he was named Educator of the Year for the Cleveland Clinic Respiratory Institute and was nominated for the Mason F. Sones Innovation Award. In 2022, he was nominated for the Cleveland Clinic’s Frank E. Bunts Professional Staff Award for Medical Education. In 2025, Dr. Chaisson was again nominated for the Mason F. Sones Innovation Award for innovations in Pulmonary Artery Catheter Simulation and a guidewire retention prevention device. Dr Chaisson maintains active clinical and research interests in the hemodynamic evaluation of shock and PAH and in medical education innovation.
Dr. Khouli is the Enterprise Director of the Critical Care Center and Chair of Critical Care Medicine in the Integrated Hospital Care Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. He joined the Cleveland Clinic Respiratory Institute in 2018 as the Department Chair of Critical Care Medicine. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, he led our teams in collaboration with interdisciplinary enterprise leaders to successfully prepare and implement best practices across our ICUs that resulted in excellent outcomes for our patients and caregivers across Northeast Ohio. Dr. Khouli has special expertise in the evaluation and management of patients with complex critical illnesses including sepsis and septic shock, multi-organ failure, and decision making at the end of life. He has been leading the reorganization of Critical Care at the Cleveland Clinic with aims to align all critical care programs and ICUs across the Cleveland Clinic national and international markets. Dr. Khouli was an early leader in the development of simulation training. He founded the Center for Advanced Medical Simulation (CAMS) at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospitals in New York City; one of the earliest centers in the U.S. to be accredited by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. Dr. Khouli has been an invited lecturer regionally, nationally, and internationally. He has received several government, private foundations, and industry research grants and has authored many peer-reviewed articles, abstracts, and book chapters.
Matt Siuba, DO is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Associate Program Director of Critical Care Medicine Fellowship, focused on research and scholarship.
He completed combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics training at Western Michigan University and subsequently trained in the Critical Care Fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic where he served as chief fellow. He completed a Master of Science in Clinical Research program at Case Western Reserve University in 2022. In 2020, he was awarded Critical Care Medicine Teacher of the Year.
His primary areas of both clinical and research interest are shock/hemodynamics, pulmonary hypertension, ARDS, and ICU procedures
Erin Covert, MD is a Clinical Associate Staff of Critical Care Medicine and Associate Program Director of Critical Care Medicine.
She is a graduate of the University of Toledo College of Medicine. She completed her Internal Medicine residency and served as Chief Medical Resident at the Cleveland Clinic from 2017-2021 before completing her Critical Care Medicine Fellowship from 2021-2023, also at the Cleveland Clinic, where she served as chief fellow. She transitioned into a staff role within the program in 2023 and was awarded the Critical Care Medicine Teacher of the Year for 2023-2024.
Dr. Covert serves as the SQPE liaison for the fellowship program and her scholarly work is QI and safety focused, as well as education focused. She serves as the co-lead for the MICU sepsis review committee and mortality review committee and helps to lead the monthly Morbidity and Mortality Conference.
About Cleveland
Cleveland is a vibrant city situated on the southern shore of Lake Erie, with a population of 400,000 within the city proper and over 2 million in the Cleveland metropolitan area.
