Linda Aponte-Patel, MD

Linda Aponte-Patel, MD, specializes in pediatric critical care medicine for children in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and Pediatric Cardiovascular ICU, including those recovering from surgery for complex congenital heart disease as well as patients who need organ transplants, suffer trauma, or have neurosurgical or orthopedic conditions. She works closely with a team of multidisciplinary specialists to provide compassionate care to children with complex conditions.

In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Aponte-Patel is an active educator. In 2013, she became one of the associate program directors for the pediatric residency program at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital (NYP/CHONY). She focuses on curriculum development and has created new rotations, including transport and nursing electives for pediatric residents, as well as directing and administering the elective resident experience for the entire residency program. In 2018, she became the director of the pediatric critical care medicine fellowship program.

Dr. Aponte-Patel has collaborated with Dr. Anita Sen, Director of Quality Assurance for the Division of Pediatric Critical Care, to implement and standardize debriefing practices following cardiac arrests in the ICUs and after Rapid Response Team activations on the pediatric floors of NYP/CHONY. She has facilitated workshops for senior pediatric residents to learn these debriefing techniques and has co-developed an educational interdisciplinary workshop series to review cardiac arrests using real-time monitoring and cardiac defibrillator data.

Dr. Aponte-Patel’s other interest is revitalizing CUMC’s diversity and inclusion efforts. She chairs the Pediatric Residency Diversity Council, which aims to foster a community of pediatricians that reflects the growing diversity of our patients locally and across the nation. In 2014, Dr. Aponte-Patel was selected for and sponsored to attend the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Minority Faculty Career Development Seminar and has applied the seminar’s concepts as an educator and mentor to pediatric residents, who have led peer education workshops on “Conversations about Race in America and Implicit Bias.”