The Fellowship Council (FC) continues to lead in surgical fellowship education. For a quarter century, the Fellowship Council has continued to grow and bring together Program Directors, Associate Program Directors and Contributing Faculty, and Program Directors for most of the non-ACGME fellowships in GI Surgery. Currently, it is the main accrediting body for surgical fellowships that offer training in Advanced GI/MIS, Bariatrics, non-ACGME Colorectal, Complex Gastrointestinal Surgery, Comprehensive Flexible Endoscopy, Foregut, Hepatopancreatobiliary (HPB), and non-ACGME Thoracic surgery. This year, fellowships that offer advanced training in Hernia and Abdominal Wall reconstruction will be piloted with plans to add them as a designation in academic year 2024-25. The FC works as the body that offers standardization and structure and accredits fellowships sponsored by surgical specialty societies. Currently the sponsoring societies working through the FC includes AFS, AHPBA, AHS, ASMBS, SAGES, and the SSAT.
In the last couple of years, via the leadership of Dr. L Michael Brunt and Dr. Aurora Pryor, the FC has invested significantly, and often led the way, in many changes to improve the accreditation process, enhance our case-log interface, implement EPAs, and redesign curriculum to make it a living curriculum. This year, the FC, in this presidency, will focus on standing on that amazing work and continue that work to transfer Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) to an app-based platform and continue the curriculum redesign work.
I am also honored to work with AHS and SAGES to onboard non-FC Hernia-Abdominal Wall program fellowships that currently exist to allow for all programs offering training in Hernia-abdominal wall to enter the match in 2024 under the FC membership. The FC is also keen to improve the applicant experience using the FC website and case-log systems. To that end, and under Dr. L Michael Brunt’s presidency, learners have been added to crucial FC Committees, including Web-Case log; Education and Curriculum; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; and Research. Further, the FC is investing time and money in improving our web platform and creating enduring materials that help explain the role of the FC, the role of the surgical societies, and the role of the local fellowship educators (the Program Director, Associate Program Director and Faculty).
The Fellowship Council continues and will always be where surgeon educators come together to help move the field forward, standardize advanced GI surgical education, and keep North American fellowships at the cutting edge of global surgical fellowship education. This year, we also have the honor of having our first non-North American fellowship (HPB program in Latin America) graduate their first fellows (Chile-Brazil-Mexico). With this, I invite all surgeon educators that work with fellows to be involved. The FC is open to all, innovative, and welcomes your ideas and insight.
Feel free to contact me directly with any questions whatsoever, and thank you for your trust as President of the Fellowship Council.