Fellowship in Pediatric Surgery

Thank you for your interest in training in pediatric surgery at the University of Utah. The program was established in June 2011, and we became accredited in June 2012. We are affiliated with Primary Children’s Hospital, which is the sole training site for the fellowship. Primary Children’s Hospital serves a catchment area that includes Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada. Our program therefore provides our fellow with a broad-based experience encompassing both common and unusual pediatric surgical conditions. Infants and children from this large geographic area seek tertiary and quaternary care principally at Primary Children’s. This results in our fellows having extensive experience in the perioperative and operative care of children with complex conditions. We believe that excellent training in pediatric surgery must be based upon exposure to a high volume of infants and children with complex problems.

The faculty has chosen to be a single-fellow program despite this large patient volume to assure that emphasis of the fellowship is educational. This allows our trainee to engage in complex neonatal operations from the first day of fellowship. It also allows the fellow to choose the cases which are most educational and to direct the service for the entire training period. Care of the large number of operative patients with a small continent of trainees is successful because we have a large group of well-trained pediatric surgical, advanced practice clinicians.

The faculty includes 10 surgeons each of whom has an individual focus area of clinical practice and academic.  This facilitates our ability to develop the level of expertise expected at a referral center. Multispecialty clinics led by our surgeons include: fetal treatment center, colorectal center, inflammatory bowel disease center and esophageal airway center. We are a level 1 trauma center and lead statewide pediatric trauma network. Additionally, some of our surgeons are recognized as national leaders in oncology. All of the surgeons care for the full range of neonatal and childhood surgical diseases so the fellow receives training in multiple approaches. Members of our faculty actively participate in the leadership of national organizations including the American Board of Surgery, the American College of Surgeons, American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Surgery and the American Pediatric Surgical Association.

Training Experience

Case Logs

Training of the pediatric surgery fellow is the core educational mission of our division. We have therefore designed our clinical service to maximize the educational benefit for our fellow. This typified by our decision to have only a single fellow despite our high case volume. This assures that the fellow will do the most complex pediatric surgery cases from the first day of fellowship. It also helps us maintain the educational focus as it is simply impossible for a single fellow to meet all of the service requirements of the division. Our fellow routinely finish the fellowship with 1600-2000 total cases and by far and away exceed the minimum case requirement as defined by the American Board of Pediatric Surgery.

Service

The clinical service is supported by our team of 16 experienced APC's, which allows the fellow to focus on the most complex and educational clinical problems. The fellow has one day per week dedicated to outpatient clinical experience.

Rotations

• Neonatal Intensive Care Unit- 4 weeks in the first year
• Pediatric Intensive Care Unit - 4 weeks in the first year
• Pediatric Urology - 2 weeks in the second year
• Otolaryngology – 2 weeks in the second year
• Additional rotation in the Burn Unit at the University of Utah Hospital or on Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery are optional for interested fellows

Call Schedule

The call schedule is designed to maximize the education opportunities for the fellowship.  Therefore the pediatric surgery fellow call is limited to every other weekend in house call during the two years of the fellowship. Pediatric surgery fellows are reimbursed additional call pay during those call periods. In addition, during the second year of the fellowship, the fellow is credentialed to performed common pediatric surgical procedures (i.e., laparoscopic appendectomy) independently. 

Meeting/Training Course policy: Our fellow routinely attends APSA in the first year and AAP in the second year. Additionally, our fellow attends 2-3 offsite courses during the fellowship. These have typically included the colorectal and oncology course. The fellow may attend additional meetings to foster development of particular academic or clinical interest. Time away is subject to RRC regulations governing time in training.

Board Passage Rate (3 years): 100%

Fellow Salary: PGY6 – $87,436.00; PGY7 – $89,857.00. Additional call pay compensation.