Jeffrey Fried, MD, FCCM, FCCP

Dr. Jeffrey Fried is our Emeritus Director of Critical Care Medicine for the Internal Medicine Residency at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. He did his Internal Medicine residency and Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at LA County-USC Medical Center, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Critical Care Medicine and Pulmonary Medicine. He semi-retired in 2023, but continues to fill in part-time for the Resident Service in the, Medical ICU, host the Medical Mythbusters series, and serve as Co-Director of the FCCS course.

He joined a private Pulmonary and Critical Care medical practice in Santa Barbara in 1988. While in private practice he was very active as voluntary faculty for the Internal Medicine Residency Program at SBCH. After 16 years of practice, he gave up his private practice to follow his passion for critical care and became the first full time Medical Director of the Medical ICU at SBCH in August 2004.

He started the ICU rotation in the Internal Medicine Residency at that time, along with daily multi-disciplinary rounds in the ICU. He subsequently was promoted to Medical Director of Adult Critical Care in 2009. He joined the full-time faculty of the Residency program in 2013.

His primary research interest is in Sepsis, and he has devoted much of his efforts to improving sepsis care, including the creation of one of the first Sepsis programs and management protocols in the state of California in 2005. He has initiated many quality improvement projects in the ICU, and published and presented work at national meetings on research in sepsis, mechanical ventilation, quality improvement, and medical informatics. He has been a research advisor and mentor to medical residents in the program.

He serves as a clinical consultant to researchers at UCSB and to an NIH funded research consortium investigating metabolic changes and the role of glycoproteins in sepsis. He enjoys teaching on daily rounds in the medical ICU, as well as giving didactic lectures. He initiated the Fundamentals of Critical Care Medicine course for incoming surgical and medical residents in 2004 and continues to serve as Course Director.

In 2017, he created the Medical Mythbusters conference, which he continues to moderate. He feels humor is an important part of both teaching and life, and tries to incorporate this into rounds and everyday practice, to help decrease some of the stress and gravitas of the ICU environment.