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Endocrine Fellowship

Endocrine Fellowship Program

The main goal of the Yale Endocrine Surgery Fellowship Program is to provide advanced endocrine surgical training and research opportunities in the field of Endocrine Surgery. The fellowship is designed for individuals who have completed their general surgery training and seek to develop a career in endocrine surgery. We have a busy clinical practice with 3 full-time endocrine surgeons: Dr. Courtney Gibson, Dr. Jennifer Ogilvie, and Dr. Adriana Ramirez. We perform over 600 endocrine operations each year, as such, our fellows typically complete over 300 cases during their fellowship year.

This program provides intensive endocrine surgery training with experienced endocrine surgeons, with an emphasis on the multidisciplinary care of the patient. Our wealth of endocrine surgical cases will afford the fellow extensive operative experience, combined with advanced techniques including minimally invasive parathyroidectomy under local, cervical block anesthesia, minimally invasive (transabdominal and retroperitoneoscopic) and open adrenalectomy, and complex neck dissections. The fellow will participate in clinical and/or translational research and, under appropriate mentorship, make substantive contributions to the scientific literature. The fellow will learn neck ultrasound and routine flexible fiberoptic laryngoscopy (via a one-month combined rotation with our ENT and radiology colleagues). In addition, fellows will develop expertise in neck ultrasound and recurrent laryngeal nerve monitoring.The fellow will actively participate in weekly endocrine multispecialty conferences and interact extensively with endocrinology, cytology, radiology, and nuclear medicine.

Although our neuroendocrine tumor (NET) surgical experience is somewhat limited, our fellows can expect participate in roughly 3-5 NET cases of evaluation and diagnosis, with opportunity to be involved in those operative procedures (via our surgical oncology colleagues).

Duration of the fellowship:

1 Year – Fully Funded. One clinical fellow positions available.

Objectives

Provide advanced endocrine surgical training and research opportunities in the field of Endocrine Surgery. This will be conducted in an academic department emphasizing preoperative evaluation, operative skills and long-term management. The fellowship is designed for individuals who have completed their general surgery training and seek to develop a career in endocrine surgery.

Highlights

Intensive endocrine surgery training with experienced endocrine surgeons (Courtney Gibson, MD, MS; Adriana Ramirez, MD, MPH; Jennifer Ogilvie, MD), emphasizing the multidisciplinary care of the patient. Our wealth of endocrine surgical cases will afford the fellow extensive operative experience, combined with advanced techniques including minimally invasive parathyroidectomy under local, cervical block anesthesia, laparoscopic (transabdominal and retroperitoneoscopic) adrenalectomy and complex neck dissections. The fellow will participate in clinical and/or translational research and, under appropriate mentorship, make substantive contributions to the scientific literature. The fellow will learn neck ultrasound and routine flexible fiberoptic laryngoscopy. The fellow will actively participate in weekly endocrine multispecialty conferences and interact extensively with endocrinology, cytology, radiology and nuclear medicine.

Research

The fellow will participate in clinical and/or translational research and, under appropriate mentorship, make substantive contributions to the scientific literature. In addition to various clinical outcomes research initiatives within our section, we have substantial interdisciplinary collaborations with several basic science and translational research labs including:

  • Kim Blenman, PhD, an immunologist whose research focuses on understanding and identifying specific immune mechanisms responsible for disparities in disease pathogenesis and therapeutic response.
  • Nicole Deziel, PhD, an epidemiologist whose lab is focused on applying statistical models, biomonitoring techniques, and environmental measurements to provide quantitative assessments of exposure to environmental contaminants in population-based studies.
  • Jaime Hyman, MD, the Division Chief of Ambulatory Anesthesiology, whose research focuses on enhancing the early recovery of patients undergoing ambulatory surgery.
  • Diane Krause, MD, PhD, whose work involves single cell characterization of primary human parathyroid tissues to better understand the functionality of parathyroid glands, differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into functional parathyroid-like cells, and determination of the minimal cell requirements for restoration of parathyroid function in vivo.