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Our overall goal is for you to learn the fundamentals of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition, as outlined below. We offer an interactive, supportive environment for your learning. Your dedication to learning and your active participation will pay off.

The Pediatric Gastroenterology service consists of an inpatient service (that includes GI patients and consults), outpatient clinic (at the UNC campus and Rex Hospital) and endoscopic procedures. You will actively participate in all three settings.

Please contact Dr. Sabina A. Mir () at least one week prior to starting your elective. Dr. Mir will personally review the goals / expectations of this rotation and provide you with the outpatient clinic template and educational tools. You will get a folder with the rotation goals, clinic schedule, GI questions. Remember to provide Dr. Mir with your pager number and schedule a meeting toward the end of your rotation with her or the attending you spent most clinical time with to debrief and receive specific feedback. Please contact Dr. Mir for any other questions/ concerns during the rotation.

Goals

At the end of your rotation, you will be able to:

  1. Understand the basic principles of food intake, digestion and absorption.
  2. Know how to make a nutritional assessment, and how to estimate caloric needs in different age groups.
  3. Be familiar with different options to provide nutrition to patients who need nutrition support.
  4. Have a working knowledge of common conditions that affect the GI tract (functional gastrointestinal disorders, chronic inflammatory diseases of the intestine and liver, neonatal cholestasis, etc.), along with their management.

Expectations

For days when you are at the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, in addition to participating in the rotation, you will attend morning report and noon conference (Curnen Denny Conference, ground floor of the Women’s hospital). You will also attend Grand Rounds (Thursday 8 am – Old Clinic Auditorium).

Experiential learning:
In the inpatient service you will review the information on each patient in the electronic medical record and actively participate in rounds. In the outpatient clinic and for inpatient consults you will seek opportunities to see patients, take a focused history, perform a physical exam and discuss the approach to diagnosis and management of each case with the supervising attending, and document the recommendations in the chart. In the procedure room you will observe endoscopic procedures, learn the normal appearance of the upper digestive tract and the colon, and learn to recognize abnormal findings.

Didactic learning:
A list of GI topics from the ABP content specification is in the folder. Keep a log for yourself to ensure that you cover the topics during your elective month.
Review the pre-test questions. During your rotation you will be given articles to read; complete the post test prior to completing your rotation.

Didactic Presentation:
You will prepare a 20 min case-based presentation for presentation to the GI faculty on the last Friday of your rotation. Pick a case that was interesting to you, summarize it, and provide a focused literature review and the main lesson(s) that you learned.