The colorectal curriculum is designed to expand each fellow’s knowledge base by leveraging the most up-to-date, evidence-based information on colon and rectal surgery. It consists of a basic science conference, invited lectures, a journal club, gastrointestinal (GI) tumor board, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) conference, a morbidity and mortality conference, as well as in-person and online courses and simulation sessions.  

Robotic surgery lectures and board review sessions are built into the training experience. Fellows are also encouraged to use American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons University, an online educational platform established by the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons (ASCRS), to further supplement their education. 

Our weekly didactic sessions and available courses/meetings are as follows:

• Monday: GI tumor board, colorectal research meeting
• Tuesday: IBD conference
• Wednesday: Morbid and mortality conference, Department of Surgery Grand Rounds
• Thursday: Colorectal conference/journal club
• Friday: GI endoscopy conference

Fellowship courses include the Colorectal Career Course, Intuitive Robotics Course, Medtronic SNS Course, and an advanced endoscopy course. Regular meetings include the New York Society of Colon and Rectal Surgery conferences, as well as the national ASCRS meeting.

Rotations

For the Colon and Rectal Surgery Fellowship, the academic year is divided into three, four-month rotations, alternating between three Mount Sinai Health System campuses: The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai West, and Mount Sinai South Nassau.

The Colon and Rectal Surgery Fellowship offers a competitive salary and benefits package. To apply, please submit all required materials through the Electronic Residency Application Service no later than September 1 of the year prior to the fellowship's August 1 start date. In addition to a completed application, applicants need to provide:

• Three letters of recommendation (one from your residency program director)
• American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination scores
• A personal statement

Once all application materials are received, we invite selected applicants for interviews in September and October.

The Division of Colorectal Surgery is actively engaged in clinical research, which includes a research team of one to two research fellows, one research manager, and three research coordinators. During training, our fellows are paired with a research mentor who supervises their research project. Current areas of research include:

• Inflammatory bowel disease: The Division launched a prospective RedCap-based IBD surgical database in 2018 that has already accrued more than 1,500 adult and pediatric patients. A key feature of the database includes collection of functional questionnaires that will evaluate the impact of surgical intervention on patient-centered outcomes. Our surgeons also collaborate with the GI IBD Division on several therapeutic, interventional, and observational trials. In addition, our Division has been an active contributor to the IBD National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database and research projects funded by the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Surgical Research Network. The IBD surgery research team holds monthly virtual research meetings.
• Colorectal Cancer: Our surgeons are actively engaged in national and institutional therapeutic trials in anal, colon, and rectal cancer, and they contribute to biorepository, microbiome, and tumor marker studies. Our surgeons serve as lead primary investigators on several multicenter trials, including the SAFE-2 randomized trial of the Colovac device, the ASCRS-sponsored North American phase 2 trial of taTME for rectal cancer, and the ASCRS-funded multicenter pilot robotic vs. taTME trial for low rectal cancer.
• Clinical Trials: Our faculty lead and participate in several sponsored device trials, including surgical stapling, magnetic anastomosis, surgical adhesions and ileus prevention, and intraoperative localization using fluorescence agents.
• Regional, national, and international collaborations: Our Division supports multicenter research collaborations through registry participation (IBD-NSQIP), device trials, investigator-initiated trials in IBD and rectal cancer, and international snapshot collaboratives. Within these efforts, Mount Sinai Health System is leading an ASCRS-sponsored project, which is a multi-society, international collaborative to develop a novel framework for reporting and grading anastomotic leak in colorectal surgery.  

Recent Publications