I am a columbia gi fellow and there are intrinsic problems with the program (like many programs).
One of the main issues is that we dont have enough scoping time. Many peer programs have a half day per week for each fellow to scope in the 2nd and 3rd year. We, on the other hand, have four 1-hour slots on one half day of the week for all fellows to scope outpatients. Since there are 10 of us, and only four slots to scope patients, the majority are out of luck. If you want to scope outside this time, then it is your responsibility to find an attending who is willing to supervise you scoping your patients, which is an issue since many of the attendings do not accept medicaid patients. However, our PD is usually available and accepts medicaid patients. Someone mentioned that we don't scope attendings' patients and that is true even though Columbia is a teaching hospital. We don't even scope our PD's outpatients. We only scope our own outpatients, and our panel is fairly small. As a first year there are ~ 2 hours per day set aside to scope inpatient consults which again isn't enough time to scope all the inpatients and some get discharged with plans for outpatient scopes. Yes, we get our numbers, but the numbers required by ACGME are bare minimums and most people do not feel proficient even at these numbers.
There are no experts in motility or IBD on staff. The latter is quite problematic as I don't feel we get evidenced-based teaching when our patients in clinic or on service have IBD. It doesn't feel quite safe. To get more IBD teaching we have IBD case conference each month, where Dr. Scherl from Cornell comes over, but sometimes she is not there or has to leave early. In that case, it's the blind leading the blind.
Core didactics are an hour a week and are often mediocre; the curriculum is just not robust. Throughout the month there are tons of various conferences (celiac disease once a month, Small bowel conference a month, research conference monthly, path conference weekly, IBD case conference/journal club twice a month, Fellow journal club, etc). Unfortunately, we do not have radiology rounds which is a shame. I think we should have less path conference and incorporate radiology rounds. We also have weekly grand rounds, which is very poorly attended by the faculty. Less than 1/3 of our attendings show up for grand rounds.
Teaching is so-so. Preceptors for clinic often show up an hour late or sometimes do not show up at all and we have to staff patients by phone. How much quality teaching is done over the phone? None. The attendings often times do not seem devoted to education and mentoring us. On the other hand, there is plenty of research time during the 2nd and 3rd year. You can even get a masters or take classes at Mailman.
I am only one of the fellows, but I don't think the majority of people are happy here. Perhaps that is why you don't see fellows during the interview day. Our administration is aware of many off these issues, but unfortunately little has been done to remedy them.
