PEDI 709P Pediatric Gastroenterology

Credits: 4
This elective offers the student clinical experience in combined inpatient and outpatient settings seeing children with various gastrointestinal disorders. Students will round on the inpatient service and be asked to follow one or two consult patients. Students will see patients on a daily basis and report and present patients’ vital signs, lab test results, clinical courses, and plans from the previous 24 hours. When on the outpatient service, the students will see, interview and examine patients and their families and report back to the attending gastroenterologist with their findings. Students should make an attempt at an assessment and plan. Students will also have the opportunity to observe various GI procedures and attend some teaching conferences like path and radiology rounds with the GI team. The rotation will introduce the student to acute and chronic conditions affecting the entire gastrointestinal (GI) tract including nutritional disorders and hepatobiliary-pancreatic systems. Specifically, patients may have a wide array of disorders ranging from acute (e.g., GI bleeding) or chronic disorders (e.g., Crohn’s disease) and low (e.g., irritable bowel syndrome) to high (e.g., s/p liver transplant) acuity. The student may observe endoscopic and other diagnostic (e.g., motility) and therapeutic (e.g., foreign body removal) procedures. Some patients have liver failure requiring artificial liver support or hepatic transplants, while others have short bowel syndrome and intestinal failure requiring chronic intravenous nutrition, enteral tube feeding or a small intestinal transplant. The student will work collaboratively with dieticians, speech therapists, psychologists, pulmonologists, otolaryngologists, surgeons, other subspecialists and primary care doctors.

Graded: Pass/No pass
May be taken only once for credit