About Us

Pediatric Critical Care Medicine faculty work to stabilize, diagnose and manage infants, children, and adolescents with life-threatening medical and surgical problems.

• Trauma
• Hypoxic Injury (lack of oxygen)
• Acute Lung Injury
• Serious Infections
• Liver Failure
• Reversible Heart and/or Lung Dysfunctions, using ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation)
• Cardiopulmonary Failure
• Post-Operative Care
• Multi-Organ Dysfunction
• Monitoring of Sedation & Analgesia
• Circulatory Failure
• Palliative Care
• Cancer
• Solid Organ and Bone Marrow Transplant
• Acute Kidney Failure using Renal Replacement Therapy
• Neurologic Dysfunction
• Severe Head Injury

Our Pediatric Intensive Care Unit is staffed by Board-Certified/Board Eligible Pediatric Critical Care physicians who are physically present 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. In addition, the multidisciplinary team involved in caring for critically ill children includes Pediatric Critical Care Fellows, Pediatric Residents, Advanced Practice Nurses, Pharmacists, Respiratory Therapists, Physical Therapists, Child Life Specialists, Case Managers, Social Workers, and Nutritionists.

We work collaboratively with pediatric specialists and surgical specialists, as well as those in diagnostic and therapeutic radiology, to bring a multidisciplinary approach to critical care. Learn more about our faculty.

We assist physicians at other hospitals in the evaluation of children with complex and potentially critical illness.

We offer a highly-skilled critical care transport team 24 hours per day to bring children from other hospitals and locations to the Children's Hospital in a safe and expeditious manner. Learn more about the Pediatric Transport Service.

Our 19-bed Pediatric Intensive Care Unit is located at the Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital.

Intensive Care evolved in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale Medical School and Yale-New Haven Hospital, as it did elsewhere, in response to specific patient needs that could not be met safely without an area of concentrated resources. In the early 1960s a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was developed by Louis Gluck to care for premature and other potentially unstable infants.

In the mid 1970s, a 6-bed Pediatric Intensive Care Unit was built at Yale New Haven Hospital and Peter Rothstein, M.D., from the Department of Anesthesiology, was its first Director from 1978-1983. During this time, a full-time ICU Service and regular rotation through the PICU was developed for the pediatric residents. The care of all pediatric patients needing intensive care, including a growing number of patients who underwent cardiac surgery, were cared for in the PICU.

In 1983, George Lister, M.D., became Director of the PICU and in the following year he established the Section of Critical Care and Applied Physiology in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. Over the ensuing years, Dr. Lister presided over an impressive expansion of both the clinical and academic activities of the section. In addition, in 1985, he was named Director of an NIH-sponsored cardiopulmonary training program (T32) that had been in existence since 1977 under the directorship of Norman Talner, M.D. This was the beginning of the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship at Yale. In 2000, the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital was built and the PICU moved to a new 11-bed unit.

The Section of Critical Care Medicine is now in its fourth generation. In 2003, Clifford Bogue, M.D. was named Chief of Critical Care Medicine and Director of the PICU, Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. In 2004, the PICU was remodeled and expanded to its current size of 19 beds. The section maintains active clinical, research and educational programs. In 2012 Josep Panisello, MD became the Medical Director of the PICU as Dr. Bogue became interim Chair of Pediatrics and ultimately the Chief Medical Officer of the Children's Hospital.