Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Competencies

• Six domains: basic principles of gastroenterology, evaluation of common gastroenterological problems, gastrointestinal disease and nutrition, liver and biliary and pancreatic disease, interfaces with gastrointestinal medicine, and diagnostic and therapeutic investigations
• Endoscopy is a theme inside the investigations domain rather than a count: consent, the general principles, upper gastrointestinal endoscopy and its therapeutic role, colonoscopy, endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography, endoluminal imaging of the small intestine, and endoscopic ultrasound
• The standard is set against one practice: referred patients across the full range of conditions, upper gastrointestinal endoscopy and colonoscopy lists in a private or day facility, inpatient management including perioperative care, and a suburban teaching hospital appointment with teaching responsibilities
• Detailed knowledge of the common and important conditions, and enough of the less common ones to recognise them even where you would not treat them yourself
• Liver biopsy is named as something trainees are not expected to train in, which is worth knowing before a hepatology term is chosen for it
• By the end of the core years, not the end of the program: able to practise independently and unsupervised at consultant level

To complete

• A Learning Needs Analysis at the start of every term, discussed with your supervisor and used to set that term's goals
• A meeting with your supervisor in the first week of each term to define its objectives, then a formal meeting at least every 12 weeks to review progress
• Four Case-based Discussions, each covering a different type of disease, balanced across luminal gastroenterology and hepatology and across inpatient and outpatient
• An analysis at the end of the second core year, which defines what the elective year has to cover
• Certification of each period by the Training Program Committee for gastroenterology, which reviews progress at the end of each rotation or calendar year

Competencies

• Whatever the end-of-core-years analysis found still missing. Most of the experience comes from the two core years, and many trainees reach the end of them with requirements left over