I have had the privilege of interviewing candidates for our three-year clinical Gastroenterology fellowship program. One of the commonest questions we get is: “How many scopes do you do?” Answer: plenty!! All ACGME-compliant programs will provide sufficient procedure volumes for each fellow.
“But yeah, how many scopes?” Humans are attuned to numbers, I get it. But the most important aspect when it comes to scoping during fellowship is the breadth and depth of endoscopic procedures. Yes, getting consistent numbers of scopes per week, per month, etc. is important. More important is the depth of understanding of why we are doing X, Y, Z diagnostic procedure, why are we performing X, Y, Z therapeutic? Can we improve our technique, or save the patient from another test, from another procedure. GI medicine is truly an awesome field!
Photo by Jack B.