Washington Hospital Center is the largest private hospital in the nation's capital. A member of MedStar Health, the not-for-profit Hospital Center is licensed for 907 beds and, on average, operates at near capacity. Health services in primary, secondary and tertiary care are offered to adult and neonatal patients. Founded in March 1958 when three specialty hospitals merged into one, the Hospital Center occupies a 47-acre campus in Northwest Washington it shares with three other medical facilities. In fiscal year 2005, 46,805 inpatients were served --including 4,365 births-- and 358,351 outpatients. The Hospital Center has a medical/dental staff of 1,578.

The Hospital Center employs one of the region's most experienced surgical staff and is home to one of the nation's top cardiovascular programs. The Hospital Center's cardiac catheterization laboratory is one of the busiest in the country. A total of 19,017 cardiac catheterizations were performed during FY 2005. There were 2,036 open-heart surgeries and three heart transplants performed during the fiscal year. One of the Washington area's first heart transplants was done at the Hospital Center on May 22,1987.

Gastroenterology Training Program

Washington Hospital Center offers a fully accredited three-year fellowship in gastroenterology. The program prepares fellows to be competent consulting gastroenterologists, skilled in the evaluation and management of all gastrointestinal disorders and liver diseases.

Hospital Center serves a diverse population presenting a broad range of GI disorders. In this setting, fellows have the opportunity to develop essential clinical and endoscopic skills while attending both inpatients and outpatients. Past graduates have typically proceeded to private or hospital practice. Currently, there are five fellows in the program.

Curriculum

The graduate medical education program in the subspecialty of gastroenterology complies with national guidelines established in the American Gastroenterological Associations publication Gastroenterology 2003;124:1055-1104.

The first two years of training focus on core curriculum. Fellows gain extensive experience in the diagnosis and treatment of the major diseases of the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, pancreas, gall bladder, liver, and biliary tree along with education and training in procedures such as endoscopy, biopsy, and motility studies. The final year is an opportunity for third tier training in pancreatico-biliary endoscopy or hepatology.

Fellows supplement their core rotations in GI consult and endoscopy with various elective rotations:

* Children's National Medical Center Rotation
* Georgetown University Liver Transplantation
* Radiology Rotation
* Pathology Rotation
* Manometry

Throughout the fellowship, trainees are actively involved in the teaching activities of the GI service. This includes participation in a daily didactic presentation and interaction with the house staff assigned to the GI consult service and general medical wards.

Evaluation and Promotion

All full-time gastroenterology and hepatology faculty members formally evaluate GI fellows twice a year, in December and June. The evaluation provides fellows with timely and constructive feedback. The program director provides each fellow with a copy of the evaluation form and also electronically submits the annual required evaluation to the American Board of Internal Medicine. The evaluations are kept confidential on file in the program directors office. F ellows can review their file and request copies of their evaluation forms at any time. Promotion from year-to-year is based on the semi-annual written evaluations.

Conferences

Clinical training is supplemented by regularly scheduled conferences including:

* Weekly GI grand rounds
* Weekly Joint Clinical Case Conference
* Weekly Hepatology Conference
* Weekly Medical Grand Rounds
* Every Other Month Joint Medical-Surgical Conference
* Monthly Washington City-Wide GI Conference

The conferences are a key component of the training program; they support the in-depth discussion of particular cases, the exchange of ideas among professionals involved in the treatment of digestive disorders, and the review of current literature.

Research

All fellows are required to participate in research during their training. This experience may be conducted either in joint collaboration with the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., or along with faculty from the Section of Gastroenterology.

The Office of Graduate Medical Education offers funding to support the presentation of research at conferences or meetings.

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This information is reposted with thanks to Washington Hospital Center.