General Information

    This following information describes the general training experience offered within the affiliated hospitals in our program. The first section contains a general guideline describing the experience for all hospitals. The next section contains a description for each hospital with faculty, special programs, and interests.

    The UCLA Affiliated Training Program in Digestive Diseases has 5 component teaching hospitals: UCLA Center for Health Sciences [CHS], Los Angeles VA Greater Health Care System, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UCLA-Harbor Medical Center, Olive View Medical Center. There are 21 Fellows and over fifty full-time faculty. The Program offers training in every facet of clinical and investigative gastroenterology. Our aim is to select the most promising applicants in the country and, through intensive clinical training, formal didactic education, and research mentoring, mold them into the academic, educational, clinical, and investigative leaders of tomorrow

    Each fellow is accepted into a specific hospital-based program. This will become their base hospital. The core clinical training is a minimum of 18 months and 2 years of a continuity clinic. The core of the clinical component takes place in the first year, during which fellows spend six months at their base hospital and rotate for three months each, to two other hospitals in the Affiliated Program. These rotations ensure a diversity of patient experience, variety of instruction, and exposure to a large number of UCLA faculty and their academic interests. Much of the first year is spent with inpatient consultative Gastroenterology plus some specialty outpatient clinics. Extensive endoscopic experience is also provided.

    The centerpiece for didactic instruction is a weekly 2 hour seminar series. It is attended by all of the Fellows from the 5 hospitals and the faculty consists of the faculty from all 5 hospitals, plus other disciplines: surgery, molecular biology, physiology, etc. In addition approximately 8 visiting professors per year give a presentation at this weekly seminar series.

    After the primary clinical training, fellows enroll in a track in which they pursue their specific interests. These tracks include basic, translational and clinical investigation in a broad variety of disciplines. Some hospitals also offer intensive training in advanced endoscopic procedures in the third year of training.