Educational Curriculum

The two-year didactic curriculum is based on the SCORE curriculum with each fellow expected to complete the cycle of topics in his or her training.  Our didactic and Morbidity & Mortality conferences occur weekly for the fellows, rotating residents, and faculty, but other focused and multidisciplinary conferences occur on a quarterly basis:

Weekly or Bi-Weekly

• Morbidity and mortality
• Radiology/Surgery conference (this conference is co-lead by the 1st year fellow and one of the radiology fellows). Together they choose 4-5 interesting cases for discussion between the two departments, discussing relevant imaging and intra-operative findings.
• SCORE curriculum conference
• Case conferences (we try to focus on decision making and pre-op evaluation, with a wide variety of cases including the outpatient setting).
• Grand rounds presentations by internal or invited speakers

Quarterly

• Mock oral board exams
• Journal club
• Ethics workshop
• Neonatology/Surgery conference (topics for this conference are fellow-driven and typically based on one or two recent cases).
• Pathology/Surgery conference
• Surgeon Wellness

Fellow Rotations

First year rotations:

• NICU: 1 month
  • The rotation is focused on the fellow learning about the management of premature infants, neonatal ventilator management, and nutritional support of the surgical neonate. This rotation is typically completed in the second month of fellowship.
• PICU: 1 month
  • The rotation is focused on pediatric ventilator management, as well as more focused efforts on the critical care management of surgical and trauma patients.
• Urology: 2 weeks
  • The rotation allows the fellow to get a more in-depth surgical exposure to orchidopexy, circumcision/revision circumcision, and complex urologic reconstruction.

Second year rotations:

• ENT: 2 weeks
  • The rotation is focused on exposure to gaining expertise in rigid laryngoscopy and bronchoscopy, as well as exposure to a wide variety of ENT cases. Our ENT service is extremely busy and has a large surgical volume of complex airway patients that our fellows have the opportunity to participate in both during the dedicated rotation and throughout the fellowship.
• Fetal surgery: 1 month
  • The rotation is focused on participation in the prenatal counseling of mothers expecting infants with surgical diagnoses. The expectation is that the fellow will gain experience in the prenatal counseling of lung lesions, abdominal wall defects, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, and intestinal atresia.
• Colorectal: 1 month
  • The rotation is focused on the fellow participating in the bowel management program in order to understand better the management of constipation and fecal incontinence. The fellow participates in many colorectal operations throughout the 2-year program.

Day in the Life of Our Fellows:

Our fellowship is busy! We wanted to try to give you an idea about what a “typical” day looks like for our trainees

0600-0730: Each fellow makes bedside rounds with his or her team to see all of the patients and make plans for the day. Average number of patients on the service can vary based on the time of the year and whether or not your service is housing the Surgeon of the Week (SOW) patients for the week. Most days the census for each team will be between 15-30 patients

0730-0830: Both fellows make rounds in the NICU with the SOW and the neonatology team. We have a unique modeling of shared rounding on all the surgical babies in the NICU – this gives us an opportunity for each team to share their expertise in order to provide the best possible patient care. Our fellows run rounds and the SOW has the honor of writing the notes as rounds progress (and chiming in with wisdom, of course!). The NICU census is maintained at about 15 patients with an additional 15+ patients who have been transitioned to the medical teams after resolution of their acute surgical issues.

0830-?: Fellows are typically in the OR doing cases for the majority of the day. The surgical case assignments are done by the senior fellow. On some days, the fellows will have a half day of clinic in lieu of OR time. Each day the pediatric surgeons have 3-5 elective OR rooms running, in addition to 1-2 add on rooms depending on how many add on cases are booked. This leaves plenty of opportunity for all the trainees to have access to surgical cases.

1600-1700: End of day table rounds with both teams and the on-call teams. This is a time to catch up on what has happened during the day (as the NPs manage the patients during the day) and hear about new consults that have been seen throughout the day.

1700-1800: Fellows informally round again in the NICU, seeing patients and talking to families