CONFERENCES

Fellows will be expected to attend all conferences, which include the GI Grand Round, Journal Club, GI Research Conference, GI-Surgery and Quality Improvement. Fellows will actively participate in preparing and presenting Grand Rounds (core curriculum topics along with pathophysiology) under the supervision of a faculty with expertise in the area. That particular faculty will moderate those sessions while the rest of the faulty will be available to provide their input and make comments.

MONTHLY CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

GI/Liver Pathology Conference
This conference will provide the fellows with a basic overview in gastrointestinal/liver pathology. It will focus on the basics of GI pathology in an informal systematic fashion. The course will be lead by a core gastroenterology faculty and a dedicated pathologist at CRMC. The GI fellows on consult and liver services will forward a list of interesting cases to the pathology secretary who will pull out the slides on the conference day for review and discussion.

Radiology Conference
This will be an informal conference, with fellow participation, aided by faculty from the Department of Radiology. The conference will consist of GI fluoroscopic, computed tomographic (CT), MRI, and US images. It will focus on the interpretation of gastrointestinal, hepatic and biliary radiographic findings. Fellows will bring interesting cases for review.

GI-Surgery Conference
This GI surgery Conferences will introduce fellows to the diagnosis, pre-and post-operative care of a variety of GI, hepatobiliary and pancreatic diseases through discussions of interesting cases. These cases will be presented by GI fellows in the presence of both GI and surgery faculty. Potential medical and surgical therapeutic options along with limitations/complications of individual modalities will be discussed in detail.

Research Conference
Research conference will provide the opportunity to the fellows to formally study the elements of study design, decision analysis, outcomes and effectiveness research, statistics, epidemiology, and other skills necessary to conduct and evaluate clinical investigation.

Quality Improvement Meeting
Fellows will participate in these quarterly meetings to ensure continuous quality improvement. Discussion of systems-based practice will be an integral part of this effort. Our expectation is that both fellows and faculty will be involved in planning and implementing our performance improvement project. 

Journal Club
The journal club will be used as a tool to teach fellows the skills of critical reading, detection of biases, assessment of validity of controls, application of statistics, generalizability of results, and related attributes of scientific studies. This will provide a great opportunity to each fellow to critically evaluate recent articles in basic or applied research in gastroenterology and hepatology.
 
Valley Gut Club (VGC)
VGC is a monthly CME program organized by GI Division, UCSF Fresno that invites visiting scholars, professors, and national opinion leaders to stimulate new thoughts and ideas among trainees, faculty, and community gastroenterologist. This program serves as an academic resource for the Central Valley physicians.