Half of the pediatric emergency medicine faculty at Dell Children’s Medical Center trained in the fellowship they now help lead.
Avery Coffman, M.D., works with her co-fellows to complete an escape room-style simulation during the annual All Pediatrics New Fellows Bootcamp.
Dell Children’s Medical Center is the only Level I Pediatric Trauma Center in Central Texas, treating the region’s most severe pediatric emergencies across a 46-county area. As Austin has grown, so has the need for physicians equipped to care for a large and increasingly complex patient population. Now in its second decade, the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship has become an important pathway for the development of specialists at Dell Children’s.
For Sujit Iyer, M.D., the fellowship’s program director and a professor in Dell Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics, that record of retention says as much about the program’s philosophy as it does its success.
“Good training programs are professional development programs,” Iyer said. “They treat the physician as a future leader through mentorship, scholarship opportunities and exposure to experiences most people don’t see until they’ve put in their time as junior faculty.”
Building from the ground up
That approach was part of the fellowship from its earliest days. Coburn “Coby” Allen, M.D., was recruited to Austin in 2010 to establish the city’s first fellowship program in any specialty — before Dell Medical School had even opened. He spent nearly two years designing a program that paired rigorous clinical training with mentorship and opportunities in research, advocacy and leadership development.
Austin also needed more pediatric emergency medicine physicians, and Allen saw the fellowship as a way to grow that workforce rather than compete for a limited one.
“My goal was to actually make people fall in love with academic medicine,” Allen said, “and not simply tolerate it.”
Today, 17 of the fellowship’s 34 faculty members are former fellows who chose to continue their careers with the program.
Erin Munns, M.D., guides pediatric cardiology fellow Vinay Kalvacherla, M.D., during the All Pediatric New Fellows Bootcamp simulation. Munns developed the escape room-style simulation to teach and test the procedural and diagnostic skills of the incoming fellows from all of Dell Med’s pediatric subspecialties.
Erin Munns, M.D., is one of them. After attending medical school at UT Southwestern and completing her pediatric residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Munns came to Austin for fellowship.
“The faculty seemed very engaged and teaching was such a priority in the department as a whole, more so than any other place I interviewed with,” Munns said.
Munns ultimately stayed at Dell Med and Dell Children’s, where she continues to build the teaching, simulation and leadership skills she developed during fellowship.
“Fellowship prepared me clinically but also allowed me to step into leadership roles even as a junior faculty member,” Munns said. “Teaching the next generation and watching new medical students, residents and fellows gain skills and confidence is truly one of the best parts of my job.”
For Allen, stories like Munns’ help explain why so many graduates have stayed.
“They’re staying because they believe in the environment we’ve built and the people they’re working alongside.”
A familiar place, a new perspective
Avery Coffman, M.D., is now a first-year pediatric emergency medicine fellow after completing her pediatric residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Coffman watched the fellowship in Austin take shape as Allen, her father, built it, but she entered medical school at Dell Med determined to find her own path.
“I was trying really hard to not want to do pediatric emergency medicine because I didn’t want to do exactly what my dad did,” she said.
Coffman, center, matched into Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s pediatric residency in 2023 before matching into the Dell Med pediatric emergency medicine fellowship in 2026. Allen, right, was the fellowship’s first program director before leaving the role in 2021.
That resolve held until her pediatric emergency medicine rotation.
Residency in Cincinnati gave Coffman a new vantage point. When she later interviewed with fellowship programs across the country, she was comparing strong training environments and considering where she could see herself building a career — paying attention to how colleagues worked together and whether she would have room to pursue her interests.
Coffman’s background in advocacy also gave her another point of comparison. During her Growth Year, Coffman earned a Master of Public Affairs alongside her medical degree at Dell Med, and she wanted to continue pursuing health policy and legislative work during fellowship.
“I was really looking for places where I could dive into advocacy work,” she said. “Now, over the next three years, I want to get involved in legislative spaces, conducting research and pursuing projects that can have a real impact on this patient population.”
Her return to Dell Med came through the National Resident Matching Program’s fellowship match. From the program’s side of the process, Iyer said Coffman stood out for her record of service and systems improvement that began well before residency, including years of global health work in resource-limited settings.
“It takes a unique individual to volunteer their time at a young age, serve in unsupported healthcare systems and take on a role in improving them,” Iyer said. “Avery is a leader who wants to improve patient healthcare way beyond a single touchpoint in the ER.”
Room to dream bigger
Allen stepped down as program director in 2021. He remains involved as a pediatric emergency medicine physician for U.S. Acute Care Solutions, pediatric infectious disease faculty for Dell Children’s Medical Group and a fellowship mentor, while Iyer now leads the program.
Looking ahead, Iyer sees the fellowship continuing to shape both pediatric emergency medicine and the broader health landscape in Austin.
“The fellowship has to continue to cultivate physicians that will be engaged in the health care landscape growing in Austin,” he said. “It’s not just a tremendous opportunity for our fellows to multiply their impact across thousands of patients and trainees — it’s our obligation.”
Graduate medical education, or GME, refers to the period of education in a particular specialty or subspecialty following completion of medical school. This continuation of training through residency and fellowship programs provides the clinical and educational experience needed for physicians to achieve autonomy, deliver high-quality patient care, and prepare for challenges in an evolving health care landscape.
Dell Med serves as the academic home and Ascension Seton as the clinical home for nearly 500 resident and fellow physicians within 50 residency and fellowship programs ranging from family medicine and neurology to pediatric emergency medicine and cardiovascular disease.