Congratulations to second-year WashU Nephrology fellow Blessing Osondu, MD, who has been accepted into the Critical Care Medicine Fellowship offered through the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Department of Medicine, here at Washington University.
Dr. Osondu will enter the one-year fellowship upon completion of her nephrology fellowship in 2021.
“I am overjoyed with excitement and cannot wait to start my fellowship in critical care medicine at WashU,” says Dr. Osondu. “Currently, I am working with some of the most brilliant minds in the world of nephrology at WashU and soon will be working with some of the most brilliant minds in intensive care!”
Physicians trained in this critical care medicine subspecialty are referred to as intensivists and have the skills to treat a wide variety of pathophysiology in critically ill and injured patients. They also have expertise with technological procedures and devices used in intensive care settings.
The program provides a broad, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary critical care medicine curriculum and consists of rotations, the majority of which take place in Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s intensive care units:
Osondu intends to take the skillsets learned from her renal fellowship and apply them to her next role as an intensivist.
“Nephrology challenged me to think deeper, especially in bridging the gap between book knowledge and patient care,” she says. “From my fascination with solving minute problems involving my patients, I have come to see the larger landscape of helping patients through their critical illnesses.”
Having lived in a variety of countries and settings has helped Osondu become the person and physician she is now.
“I grew up in South Korea, completed medical school in Ukraine and a residency in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and am now a nephrology fellow here at WashU in St Louis. Each setting has taught me about myself and supplied lessons that have shaped me into the physician that I am today. I am resilient, resolved, and self-aware of the sacrifices I must take to reach my goals.”
As for those goals, Osondu hopes to practice nephrology and critical care medicine in an academic setting. For now, though, in addition to her other fellowship training, she is working with her mentor, Charbel Khoury, MD, on an original research project that involves phosphate repletion in the management of continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT)-related hypophosphatemia.
In 2017, two of our previous renal fellows, Fahad Edrees, MD, and Usman Younus, MD, also went on to complete the Critical Care Fellowship.
Follow Dr. Osondu (i.e. Bhappy) @awinner1015, Dr. Khoury @Charbel_Khoury, and WashU Nephrology @WUNephrology on Twitter.