The New Virtual Reality: How COVID-19 Will Affect the Gastroenterology and Hepatology Fellowship Match

Excerpt

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously disrupted medical training across every specialty worldwide, including gastroenterology (GI) fellowship training [1, 2]. GI fellows have experienced significant reductions in endoscopy procedure volumes [3], cancelation of outpatient clinics, reformatting of lectures to virtual platforms, redeployment to non-GI services, and cancelation of scientific conferences. Nevertheless, the impact is not limited to current GI fellows. Current internal medicine residents who are prospective GI fellowship applicants are also severely impacted. GI fellowship is one of the most competitive subspecialty fellowships [4, 5], as evidenced in 2019 when a total of 906 applicants applied for 577 positions [6]. In response to COVID-19, the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) has shifted the timeline for fellowship programs in order to gain access to applications from mid-July to August 12, 2020 [7]. While recent articles have addressed challenges faced by current GI fellows [1, 8], there is limited guidance on how GI fellowship applicants should cope with the unprecedented challenges presented by this pandemic. Similarly, fellowship programs and their training directors are also faced with unique challenges since showcasing the strengths of their programs to applicants will be more difficult without the conventional interview process.

…