Session 34

Dr. Sushil Duddempudi is a community-based Gastroenterologist who specializes in interventional endoscopy. He has been in practice for ten years now and specifically as an interventional endoscopist for the last seven or eight years. He used to be in academic hybrid private practice. Check out what he thinks about the field and what you should be doing if you're interested in this field.

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[01:45] An Interest in GI and Interventional Endoscopy

Dr. Sushil Duddempudi knew early on that he was going to be in a procedure-based field. It's a running joke in the field that GI people aren't smart enough to do anything else so they use procedures as much as they can. Then leave the complex stuff to the nephrologists, neurologists, and everybody else.

Sushil started residency leaning towards cardiology until realizing he hated EKGs. So he gravitated towards the GI field. He says it's not uncommon for students somewhere during their intern year where they're interested in one area. Once he started the GI fellowship, he knew he was into doing procedures. He found interventional endoscopy as a good fit for him because it lets him do procedures most of the time. But he still has this continuity with his patients which he loves. So about two-thirds to three-quarters of his time is spent doing procedures. Then maybe a quarter to a third is spent in the office seeing patients.

"GI is a pretty cut and dry field compared to some of the other fields."

Sushil describes they usually have a definitive diagnosis early on after seeing a patient and he likes the finality of it. GI borders that surgical mindset and a lot of GI's have mindset.They see a problem and they want to take care of it. Also with GI, there is finality. If the patient has rectal bleeding and you had a colonoscopy then you'd have an answer 99% of the time. When patients have abdominal pain unless it's functional, most of the time, they come up with an answer.

Moreover, Sushil likes the opportunity to do procedures. Other specialties he did consider include ENT or Neurology which would have probably worked for him as well or one of the subspecialties that are procedure-based. Ultimately, he ended up in GI.

[04:40] Traits that Lead to Being a Good Interventional Endoscopist

Sushil describes how many of those starting GI fellowship often say they want to do interventional endoscopy. Then over their first year or two, they'll select out.

"You have to enjoy doing procedures."

Some fellows he has worked with and trained over the years come in with a certain special knack. Some people just have good eye-hand coordination better than others. 90% of it can be taught and trained. But the people they look up to in the field are born with a little bit of it. This is what Sushil differentiates them from the rest. They are the guys doing the hard core cutting edge stuff. So it's a bit of something you bring within you into the fellowship and then 90% of it is just practice.

[06:15] Patient Types and Typical Day

If you're an academic interventionalist, you can tailor your practice to focus on that. This could mean 75% of your practice doing procedures. Community-based interventionalist flip it all the way around. In gastroenterology, the bread and butter is still colonoscopy.

If you're a community-based interventional endoscopist, you could be doing around 25-75% general and then the remainder is advanced interventional endoscopy. Then as you get older and you've done all the cutting edge stuff and you want to settle in a little bit, you can then focus on general gastroenterology. Then you can do the interventional stuff maybe 25% of the time.

For general GI, the younger groups tend to come in with more functional disorders and abdominal...