Fiberoptic endoscopy of the gastrointestinal tract in surgical training.

In 1981, the American Board of Surgery encouraged applicants for board certification to be familiar with a variety of endoscopic techniques upon the gastrointestinal tract. In 1983, the Department of General Surgery at Naval Hospital, San Diego established a surgical gastrointestinal endoscopy unit to train physicians to perform endoscopic procedures. Since its inception, more than two thousand procedures have been performed. The results of esophagogastroduodenoscopy and colonoscopy performed between January 1986 and October 1987 provide the numeric basis in our evaluation of our program for endoscopic training and support training in endoscopy as integral to the education of the resident in general surgery.