Dr. Steve Shein is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He was trained in Pediatrics at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital and in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine here at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh. He spent 13 years on the faculty at Rainbow, where he served as Chief of Pediatric Critical Care, directed their PICU research program, and was a Professor of Pediatrics at Case Western. He was recruited to Children's National Hospital at the end of 2025 to serve as their Chief of Critical Care Medicine and the "DC Lawyers Care for Children" Professor of Critical Care Medicine.

He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed manuscripts, most of which focus on acute respiratory failure and critical bronchiolitis. He is the co-founder of BACON (Bronchiolitis: Advancing Care and Outcomes Network), the bronchiolitis research subgroup of the PALISI network, which is the largest PICU research collaborative in the world. He has served as an invited expert on several national and international projects related to acute respiratory failure and bronchiolitis, including the American Academy of Pediatrics' "HIFLO" project to reduce unnecessary usage of high-flow nasal cannula. For his service, he was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine in 2020, accepted into the Society for Pediatric Research in 2022, and awarded multiple Society of Critical Care Medicine Presidential Citations.