GI fellowships

[dbiddy808]

The SDN specialties guide says that GI fellowships are two years long, and I have heard this from other people as well, but when I look on FREIDA at the various GI felloships, it looks like they are all three years long. Anyone have any idea about this? Is one year an unofficially mandatory research year? I am hoping to do GI either way, but would prefer to do only two years if at all possible.

 

[task]

GI fellowships are 3 years long -- with a mix of clinical and research months (mix will vary depending on program orientation and thrust). If you are interested in Hepatology, your third year of fellowship can be geared toward more Hepatology rotations. If you like general GI more, you could do more basic endoscopy stuff mixed with more general consultative GI stuff. Now if you want to do advanced therapeutic/interventional endoscopy (ERCP, different laser, RF (Stretta), endosuture procedures, there's the rub. It depends where you go. Where I went to medical school, the GI service was busy and varied enough (and there were no advanced therapeutic fellows) that your third year of fellowship you could do a ton of ERCP and other advanced therapeutic procedures to be competent out in practice. At other places, where they have interventional fellows who sap up a lot of those procedures, you don't do as much. You are more than competent on fundamental GI procdures (like EGD, colonoscopy, biopsy, banding/sclerotherapy, etc., etc.). So a lot of the time, you end up doing an advanced therapeutic endoscopy fellowship yourself. These are generally one-year in duration, and you're essentially in the endoscopy/ERCP suite all day doing procedures. Volume volume volume.

 

[jargon124]

I am just wondering if there is any tension/overlap between GI and Colon & Rectal surgery - particularly, to they fight for certain procedures? Thanks. 🙂