Fellowship Training Program – Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition Fellowship

The Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition fellowship training program at the University of Maryland is a detailed approach in how to care for pediatric patients with hepatobiliary and digestive disorders. During your training with us, you will focus on learning the fundamentals of making clinical diagnoses and managing gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary diseases from infancy to young adulthood. You will also have protected time to focus on your scholarly project during your second and third year of training.

Clinical Training

Our main campus at the University of Maryland Medical Center will serve as the primary site for your clinical training. We also provide care at three different satellite clinics throughout the Baltimore area. Our practice allows us to participate in longitudinal follow up of patients with multidisciplinary teams, when necessary. Our varied subspecialty care makes UMMC a major referral center for high-risk patients in the State.

Our curriculum relies on ACGME program requirements and covers content relevant for the Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition board exam, which is provided by the American Board of Pediatrics.

Our program also provides direct faculty mentoring. After each clinical experience, faculty provide direct feedback in addition to the program director's feedback every six months.

Fellowship training is marked by choosing a clinical mentor to guide and support the fellow through the program while serving as a career resource. Mentors meet regularly with fellows and on an annual basis to review training, developing and gauge experience.

First Year Fellowship

The first year of your training will be focused in the clinical setting. In fact, clinical training and acquisition of gastroenterology specific skills are the main objectives of the first year of training. The first year fellow will spend a majority of their clinical rotations in the inpatient setting, where you will work with a team of pediatric residents and medical students. You will also be participating in one research elective month to help you focus on developing a scholarly project, as you will need to select a research topic and research mentor. By the end of the first year, fellows may obtain IRB approval to begin scholarly work. Faculty research mentors and the scholarship oversight committee closely supervise fellow research.

Fellows will participate in weekly continuity clinic every Friday under the direct supervision by the attending physician.

The first year fellow is focused on identifying and managing disease processes, developing teaching and leadership skills, while also developing their procedural experience.

Second and Third Year Fellowship

During your second and third year of training, you will focus on managing patients with complex diagnoses in our outpatient settings, as this is where your clinical rotations will focus. You will learn to independently formulate differential diagnoses and treatment plans. During this time, you will also hone in on your leadership and teaching skills, as you will supervise the resident team during rounds. This will also be a time to focus on patient care by improving your interactions with consultants, as well as family members.

Fellows will still be part of weekly continuity clinics, in addition to one satellite clinic. A procedure day is given each week to hone in on skills. Fellows complete two months in the inpatient setting and one elective rotation each year. The second and third years focus on scholarly activity.

During the second and third years, fellow will be part of scholarly core curriculum didactics. They will have 8 months of supervised research with their mentor and scholarship oversight committee. During the third year, the fellow will focus on completing their final work product, often a manuscript submitted for publication.

Call Schedule and Duty Hours

Our fellows do not take in house call and call is evenly distributed amongst the other fellows. Our program is compliant with the ACGME and UMMC GME duty hours policy.