Vascular surgery Fellows at Cooper are expected to achieve the six core competences in the six areas listed below to the level expected of a new practitioner. While many of these may have been achieved during the resident’s general surgery training, further assessment in these areas as a fellow will be made. The faculty of the Cooper University Hospital, Division of Vascular Surgery makes the final assessment of whether these objectives are being achieved. While the second year focuses more on outpatient and research related goals, the competency-based objectives are expected be a cumulative experience from year one throughout year two. Specific knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes required are as follows:
In addition to the patient care and medical knowledge goals expected in the first year, the second year of the vascular surgery fellows training focuses more on the development of clinical and/or basic science research skills, as well as intensive training within the non-invasive vascular diagnostic laboratory, and outpatient venous center. The Vascular fellow should acclimate his or herself to the preoperative planning and postoperative assessment in the outpatient setting. Patient care and medical knowledge objectives are therefore skewed to that encountered in that setting.
The educational experiences included in the Vascular Surgery Fellowship Program consist of formal and informal components. The formal components are primarily regularly scheduled conferences and daily teaching rounds. Less formal learning goes on constantly through the interactions between Fellows and faculty.
The Vascular Surgery Conference Series is the backbone of the formal educational program. This conference will be divided between formal lecture presentation topics taken from the Core Curriculum and Journal Club topics of Vascular and Endovascular interest. Pertinent clinical guidelines will also be reviewed during some of the Journal Club dates. Members of the Vascular Surgery Faculty and other Cooper faculty will present the majority of the lectures. The Vascular Surgery Faculty will be the moderators for Journal Club sessions. Each Vascular Surgery Fellow will also be required to present three to four of these didactic lectures. Topics will be assigned to them by the Program Director.
Journal Club
Takes place once a month; assignments are shared among Fellows and faculty. For each conference three to five articles and/or a clinical guideline are selected. Copies of each article should be distributed to all Fellows and pertinent faculty one week prior to the Journal Club. The Fellow should be able to concisely present the purpose and methods of the study. This should be followed by a review of the results and a discussion of the study, including a critique of the methods, results, and discussion. A Vascular Surgery faculty member will act as moderator.
Morbidity and Mortality
Meeting is held biweekly to review cases with unexpected outcomes (death, complications, etc.). The Fellow responsible for the patient at the time of the patient’s death must submit an M&M report using standard form kept in ICU in the critical care section office within 24 hours. For cases selected for review at M&M, that Fellow will make a formal presentation.