Graduating general surgery residents are faced with the difficult decision of whether to pursue further specialized surgical fellowship training or to begin independent general surgical practice. Advanced GI Fellowship is a relatively new area of fellowship surgical training, with only 8 fellowships currently recognized by the Fellowship Council of the United States. The previous survey assessed the need for such a fellowship among health systems, departments, and practice groups interested in hiring a GI surgeon. More data is coming out showing that graduating surgical residents are unprepared to independently perform core general surgery procedures. Therefore, it is vitally important to be able to understand not only who are teaching general surgery residents GI surgical procedures, but also the residents' self-reported competence with GI procedures, and personal experience and degree of comfort managing both common and complex GI surgical pathologies.
