Our Curriculum

Clinical

The training occurs under the supervision of five hepatologists and six pediatric transplant surgeons in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. The fellow attends two half-day clinics per week: a general hepatology/pre-transplant continuity clinic and a post-transplant clinic. The fellow will have a chance to rotate with all the faculty members. The fellow will also perform liver biopsies with an interventional radiologist and liver faculty member.

The Transplant Hepatology Fellow is responsible for inpatient admissions and consults on the service during six months of the year. The fellow will have primary responsibility for all patients on the Hepatology service as well as hepatology consultations requested of the service. The fellow will participate and lead daily rounds of the other learners if they are part of the liver service rounding team. All clinical activities will occur with appropriate supervision by the attending hepatologist. The fellow will oversee and participate in the patient’s care throughout the hospitalization. The fellow will perform the initial assessment for all consultations and formulate recommendations and communicate back to the requesting service. For patients on the Abdominal Organ Transplant In-patient Service, the fellow will participate in daily rounds, assist in leading the plan for the day’s care in conjunction with the transplant surgeons, and communicate with the surgical service as required. In all cases, the fellow will be responsible to communicate with other team members and consultants, coordinate, perform or participate in any diagnostic and therapeutic testing and procedures. 

The fellow will serve in a consultative role for all patients in the Intensive Care Unit. The fellow will be expected to provide Transplant Hepatology input for care, consultation, and procedural expertise. The fellow will be given opportunities to observe a liver harvest, as well as transplantation surgeries. This will not only enrich the fellow’s knowledge but will also ascertain their understanding of the technicalities and challenges of the transplant surgery and will help them better communicate indications, risks and benefits of liver transplantation to patients.

Research

Fellows will have the opportunity to interact with faculty who are involved in various avenues of research across the spectrum of pediatric hepatology and transplant. As a one year, primarily clinical fellowship, the expectations for scholarly activities are very focused. All trainees are expected to complete a case review series by the end of their one year program. This process must include the analysis of a relevant case series including at least 3 patients. The trainee is expected to submit all the appropriate IRB applications for the study, extract the data from chart review and prepare and submit a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal. The project will be mentored by one of the key faculty for the training program. To facilitate the needed skills to complete their activity, fellows will also be expected to complete the Fellow Educational Curriculum, a periodic educational program with sessions held throughout the year to address various learning topic including grant writing, research design, statistics, epidemiology, and how to give oral presentations as well as career guidance and mentoring. Some of the fellows trained in this program will be in the midst of bench research stemming from their three-year Pediatric Gastroenterology Fellowship. These fellows are expected to continue these research activities. In addition, fellows will be required to have completed all the required training for clinical investigation that is mandated by the University of Pittsburgh Institutional Review Board. 

Conferences

  • Weekly Liver Transplant Meeting
  • Weekly Medical Hepatology Meeting
  • Weekly Transplant/Hepatology Pathology Conference
  • Weekly Pittsburgh Liver Research Center
  • Weekly Tumor Board Conference
  • Weekly GI/Hepatology Educational Conference
  • Monthly GI/Hepatology Radiology Conference