Gastroenterology Fellowship – Northeast
Hands-on training from your first day helps you deliver patient-centered gastroenterology care.
About us
Our three-year, ACGME-accredited program has been in place in northeastern Pennsylvania since 2023. While we’re a new program, for many years we have been associated with the gastroenterology program at Geisinger Main Campus in Danville. We’ve also been directly involved in the training of gastroenterology fellows, as well as family medicine, general surgery and internal medicine residents. It’s been our goal to establish our own fellowship program for years. As the Geisinger practice in Northeast PA has expanded, along with the creation of many new GME programs in this region, we pursued and secured accreditation and started our first fellowship class in the summer of 2023. That said, we’re off to an outstanding start — and we’re excited to welcome our incoming class of 2027 this coming July, which will bring us to two classes and four fellows.
Who you’ll work with
We have a robust patient population in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area, seeing the full gamut of GI pathology and disease processes. Our fellows and staff cover two busy hospitals with over 600 inpatient beds across the region. Our two hospitals are 17 miles apart (about a 21-minute drive). Situated between these hospitals is our thriving outpatient surgical center that opened in the summer of 2023. We also have a new outpatient office building adjacent to Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center in Wilkes-Barre.
As a fellow, you’ll interact directly with our patient care team and teaching faculty. Though we’re constantly growing, we employ nine gastroenterologists, one hepatologist, eight advanced practitioners and two dedicated GI pharmacists in our clinics for inflammatory bowel disease and hepatitis C treatment. There’s also our amazing endoscopy and clinical nursing and support staff, who are critical to our mission.
Here, you’ll find a multidisciplinary approach to patient care. You’ll work closely with our colorectal surgeons, general surgeons, surgical oncology, radiology, pathology and interventional radiology. Through this close relationship, we have regularly scheduled multidisciplinary conferences with many of these services to improve education and patient care. A strong didactic curriculum incorporates these specialists into a series of lectures and case-based learning, as well as offers access to a spectrum of electives. You’ll carry your own panel of continuity patients in weekly gastroenterology clinic and a separate regular hepatology clinic.
What you’ll learn
As a fellow, you’ll be trained in the full range of gastroenterology and hepatology, including:
- Diagnostic and therapeutic upper endoscopy and colonoscopy, including mucosal biopsy, polypectomy, endoscopic mucosal resection, hemostatic therapies and BOTOX® injection
- Exposure to advanced endoscopic therapies to include endoscopic ultrasound, diagnostic and therapeutic ERCP, POEM, G-POEM, myotomy for Zenker’s diverticulum, endoscopic suturing, AXIOS™ stenting, luminal stenting, full-thickness resections, Barrett’s ablative techniques and single-balloon enteroscopy
- Push enteroscopy
- PEG placement
- High-resolution esophageal manometry
- 24-hour esophageal pH/impedance testing as well as wireless pH monitoring
- Video capsule endoscopy
- Liver elastography
- Hydrogen breath testing
> Meet our Faculty
> Meet our Fellows
Program overview
Prepare for the future of gastroenterology with our team of experienced educators.
During our program, you’ll be assigned to four-week blocks over the course of the fellowship, where you’ll be involved in:
- Gastroenterology luminal procedures – Performing endoscopic procedures on inpatient and outpatient populations at two hospital-based endoscopy units, as well as an outpatient surgical center
- Gastroenterology consults – Inpatient consultation service for the full range of gastroenterology and hepatology at our two large, tertiary community hospitals with over 600 combined inpatient beds
- Esophageal physiology studies – Learning how to perform and interpret high-resolution esophageal manometry and esophageal pH monitoring (wireless and catheter-based systems)
Elective options:
- Research – Robust opportunities for research, including a large, diverse patient population and robust EMR
- Radiology – Work closely with radiology attendings on education with barium studies, CT and MRI, as well as functional GI procedures in nuclear medicine.
- GI motility – More extensive work with our esophageal physiology labs
- Bariatric and minimally invasive surgery – Working with our dedicated MIS surgeons in Scranton at one of our two hospitals
- Colorectal surgery – Working with our colorectal surgeons in clinic, with endoscopic procedures as well as OR exposure and rounding.
- Nutrition – Our clinic is commingled with GI/nutrition, and this rotation is a more intensive exposure to nutrition, managing bariatric patients and patients on parenteral nutrition.
In two dedicated inpatient “junior attending” blocks, fellows will direct the entire inpatient team with our attendings in the background. Our goal is for you to graduate with the confidence to leap right into practice. Flexibility in the PGY6 year allows you to tailor your education to individual goals or areas of clinical focus.
Clinic:
As a fellow, you’ll have two weekly clinics. The first clinic is the gastroenterology continuity clinic, which is one half-day weekly, regardless of rotation. This gives you ample time to develop relationships with patients and see the full arc of gastroenterology care. This clinic ties in patients with complex liver disease. You will see a broad spectrum of GI illness.
Didactics:
You’ll also receive a robust didactic experience, starting with an 18-month rotating weekly lecture series. Lectures are prepared and given by our fellows and staff, allowing you to be a subject matter expert on your topic — or to learn from a subject matter expert. We also have a case-based learning series with our radiology and pathology departments. During these series, we discuss patients and evaluate the relevant imaging and pathology specimens with a radiologist and a pathologist. A monthly joint gastroenterology/colorectal conference further augments complementary specialties, as we discuss complex IBD patients who have medical and surgical needs. Our research experience and quality improvement is enhanced by monthly journal club/M&M. Finally, you’ll join multidisciplinary meetings for luminal and liver tumor boards.