The Abdominal Radiology Fellowship Program at UMass Chan Medical School provides trainees with an in depth, 1-year comprehensive training experience and offers exposure to all aspects of abdominal radiology practice.  The goals of fellowship are established by the ACGME with core competencies of professionalism, patient care and procedural skills, medical knowledge, systems-based practice including quality improvement and scholarship. The ACGME recognizes the diversity of fellowships our program prepares physicians for a variety of roles, including clinicians, scientists, and educators.

Clinical rotations are designed to enable the fellows to accumulate a broad base of knowledge, develop technical skills and establish decision making and consultation skills. The rotations provide the fellow with the opportunity to develop, under supervision, progressively independent skills in the performance and interpretation of abdominal and pelvic imaging studies and nonvascular interventional procedures such as image guided drainage, biopsy, and RF ablation.

Core rotations include abdominal and pelvic MRI, CT (including CT colonography and 3D imaging), ultrasound, fluoroscopy/plain radiography, PET-CT, and non-vascular interventional procedures. Directed elective time of one month is available.

The abdominal radiology fellow will develop clinical expertise in the interpretation of all diseases of the abdomen and pelvis with particular emphasis on the following areas: hepatobiliary diseases, pancreas disease, genitourinary disease, gynecologic disease, oncology, trauma, various organ transplantation (liver, pancreas, kidney), vascular studies (Doppler, CTA, MRA).

The Fellowship Program trains the fellows to be able to interact with their referring physicians and function as consultants. This is accomplished during the day-to-day activities at the hospital and through participation in interdepartmental conferences.

Another important educational objective of the Program is to encourage fellows to participate in research projects within the section. Fellows are encouraged to submit abstracts/papers/posters for SAR, ARRS and RSNA.

Monthly goal setting and feedback on evaluations from both core and non-core rotations are based on ACGME competencies and subspecialty specific milestones. This allows for the trainee to reinforce well performed tasks and duties and to correct any area of deficiency with the goal of progressive autonomy throughout the year and unsupervised practice upon graduation.  At the conclusion of the fellowship, the fellow will demonstrate accurate clinical decision-making and interpretation of studies in all areas of abdominal radiology and be able to function independently.