219 Vascular Fellows’ Assessment of Their Training.

Back to Annual Symposium
Back to Program

Anil Hingorani, M.D., enrico ascher, md, natalie marks, md rvt, alexander shiferson, md, Alessandra Puggioni, md, victor tran, md, nirav patel, md, theresa jacob, Phd.
Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA.

Introduction. In an attempt to assess the vascular fellows’ concerns about their training, we conducted an annual survey consisting of 22 questions at a national meeting in March from 2004 to 2007. In order to obtain accurate data, all surveys were kept anonymous. Methods. The fellows were asked to rate their endovascular, open, and vascular lab experience as excellent, satisfactory, or mixed. They were queried into who taught them their endovascular skills, the quality of their didactics and amount of small cases that they did not learn from. 219 of the 258 attendees completed the survey. Males made up 87% of those surveyed. 66% were between the ages of 31 and 35 years. Second-year fellows made up 66% of those surveyed. Results. 89% were satisfied with their endovascular experience during their fellowship while 98% were satisfied with their experience with open cases. Interventional skills were mostly obtained from a vascular surgeon (73 %), an interventional radiologist (15 %), cardiologist (3%) or a mixture (9 %). The didactics were felt to be excellent, satisfactory, or to need some or much improvement in: 29%, 48%, 14% and 3% respectively. The distribution of non-learning cases was felt to be excellent, satisfactory, or to need some or much improvement in: 35%, 43%, 5%, and 2% respectively. However, only 63 % felt that their vascular laboratory experience was excellent or satisfactory. Only 40 % actually performed the vascular duplex exam, and only 53% felt that they would feel comfortable in managing a vascular laboratory. Conclusions. This survey suggests that several significant issues remain in the training of vascular fellows and that the vascular laboratory portion of the fellowship deserves more focus.

Back to Annual Symposium
Back to Program