The Pediatric Gastroenterology Fellowship Program at the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, in affiliation with Jefferson Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University (TJU), trains physicians in advanced skills in pediatric gastroenterology. Our 3-year program provides comprehensive specialty training in gastroenterology (GI), hepatology, and nutrition.
You’ll learn to diagnose and treat children with acute and chronic diseases of the digestive system and nutritional disorders, as well as gain broad-based research experience in basic or clinical sciences. The program is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in accordance with the guidelines of the North American Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition.
Our Fellowship Program
The Nemours Gastroenterology Fellowship Program provides stimulating clinical training in gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition and exposure to liver transplantation. Our dynamic group of faculty clinicians and researchers are committed to helping you attain a quality education. Our fellows attend weekly educational sessions in addition to monthly pathology, radiology, and physiology conferences and combined surgical rounds. Fellows also present and attend topic oriented journal clubs through out the year.
You’ll have opportunities to learn the indications, risks, benefits, and techniques of performing procedures such as upper endoscopy, colonoscopy, percutaneous liver biopsy, capsule endoscopy, esophageal dilatation, percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube insertions, variceal banding, pH/impedance probes and motility studies at our state-of-the-art pediatric GI endoscopy suite. You’ll learn to teach and mentor residents and medical students. You will conduct your own clinical or basic science research project under the supervision of one of our faculty members.
Training Overview
Our GI fellowship program will provide training in both the inpatient and outpatient setting. Rotations include the GI inpatient service, the GI inpatient consultation service, the GI outpatient service as well as research and elective rotations. Fellows also attend their own continuity clinic a half day per week in which they will follow their own patients throughout the 3 years of fellowship. In-hospital electives include pediatric surgery, pathology, and radiology. We also have an active liver transplantation program and our fellows do a month’s rotation on the liver transplant service.
Our fellows participate in and gain exposure to in-hospital committees and quality improvement projects. On a wider scope, our fellows participate in the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition fellows’ conferences in addition to other national and international meetings.
You’ll also gain valuable experience participating in the care of children who are followed in our specialty clinics such as those that focus on patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), celiac disease and bowel dysfunction. Fellows will also attend liver clinic during their outpatient rotation. On their inpatient rotations, our fellows learn the intracacies of providing total parenteral nutrition as well as the management of complications that may result from this type of nutritional support.
During the on-call component, you’ll have experiences that improve several aspects of your competency-based training, including patient care, knowledge, interpersonal communications, professionalism, systems-based practice, and others. You’ll work directly with emergency department staff and referring physicians doing urgent patient evaluations and other important activities.
During your training you’ll become proficient in a wide range of specialized GI diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, such as:
- Diagnostic EGD (and biopsy)
- Diagnostic colonoscopy (and biopsy)
- Flexible sigmoidoscopy (and biopsy)
- Ileoscopy via ileostomy (and biopsy)
- Polypectomy
- Paracentesis
- Hemostasis in GI bleeding
- Variceal band ligation, sclerotherapy, heater probe, argon plasma coagulation
- Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy
- Liver biopsy
- Dilation of esophageal strictures
- Foreign body retrieval
- Rectal suction biopsy
- Capsule endoscopy
- Esophageal pH-multichannel impedance
- Breath hydrogen testing
- Pancreatic stimulation
- Calorimetry
During your second and third years, you’ll be able to choose electives that add to your knowledge in such GI-related disciplines as transplantation, pathology, radiology, and surgery.
Research Opportunities
As an integral part of your fellowship experience, you’ll receive thorough training in research as it relates to the fields of gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition. The research component will focus primarily on scholarly activities during the first year and either basic science research or clinical projects during the second and third years.
Scholarly Activities
Training in the scholarly experience begins in the first year of the fellowship and continues throughout your training. You’ll develop the full range of requisite skills for research, from project design to completion and presentation to our scholarship oversight committee, in accordance with American Board of Pediatrics certification requirements.
Our state-of-the-art GI Research Lab, located on the campus of duPont Hospital for Children, is currently engaged in a variety of research-related activities, including:
- Identification of macrolipase, macroamylase, and gastric lipase from remnant serum samples
- Plasma levels of ghrelin and obestatin in children with failure to thrive and obesity
- Retrospective analysis of digestive enzyme activities in comparison to the histological changes and clinical characteristics of children
- Efficacy of montelukast versus oligoantigenic diet in the treatment of esoinophilic esophagitis (EE) and use of serum and stool ECP in the follow-up of EE
- Open-label safety and efficacy study of reslizumab (CTX55700) for the treatment of pediatric subjects with eosinophilic esophagitis who completed study RES-5-0002
- Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use in pediatric irritable bowel syndrome and functional dyspepsia (a pilot study)
Active Research
Your second and third years will include more hands-on work in either basic science research or clinical projects. You’ll use knowledge gained in the first year to design and execute a study, from concept to completion and presentation, under the supervision of one of our faculty members.
The Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children is adding a five-story expansion to enhance our quality of care for our patients and families.
About Our Hospital in Delaware
The duPont Hospital for Children is a multi-specialty, tertiary care teaching institution located on a 300-acre estate in the scenic Brandywine Valley in Wilmington, DE.
As a program participant, you’ll have access to advanced computer systems for patient care activities, electronic mail, word processing, internet access, and library research functions. Among the hospital’s amenities for all staff are:
- free parking
- park-like setting
- gym/fitness center
- on-site child care center for children of staff
- massage therapy
What's Coming in 2014
We’re building a healthier future for kids by expanding our hospital. Opening in 2014, our enhanced hospital will be like no other in the region — designed by and for families.
Contact Us
Karen DavisProgram Coordinator |
Katryn Furuya, MD, FRCPCProgram Director |
Apply for This Fellowship
Application Requirements
Deadline: See NRMP
- Curriculum vitae
- Personal statement
- Medical school transcript
- USMLE scores (all 3 levels)
- 3 references
Interviews
We begin offering interviews to fellowship candidates in January of the year before the start of fellowship. The actual interviews will take place roughly between February 1 and April 1 of the preceding year.
