During this 2 year clinical fellowship, the fellow spends a significant amount of time caring for vascular patients requiring highly specialized care. The fellow is expected to participate in a wide variety of open vascular cases and endovascular procedures. The Spectrum Health-Butterworth Campus is also a level-1 trauma hospital receiving critically injured patients from the surrounding 13 counties. The vascular surgery division is frequently involved in the care of these trauma patients. The fellow also spends one a day a week in the outpatient clinic to provide preoperative and postoperative care, and learn to interpret studies performed in the noninvasive vascular laboratory. The large number of patients on the service and the wide spectrum of vascular disease at hand provide the fellows with a unique opportunity to take care of patients and to learn from a dedicated team of vascular surgeons.

The Fellowship also provides each physician with significant experience in complex vascular surgery operations. Routine vascular operations such as carotid endarterectomy and aortic aneurysm repair are performed frequently. More complex aortic and visceral reconstructions are being done also. In addition, the fellow will learn the endovascular skills required to perform angioplasty and stenting, as well as more complex techniques for carotid stenting and endovascular aneurysm repair. Diagnostic and therapeutic endovascular procedures are being performed in the interventional radiology suite or cath lab, while more complex cases, such as endografts, are currently performed in the operating room. The endovascular experience is acquired under the direct supervision of the vascular surgery faculty.

Finally, each fellow has the opportunity to serve as a resource and teacher for junior residents in the General Surgery Residency Program. In this role, the fellow coordinates the care for each patient cared for by the vascular surgery service, and acts as a resource for the PG I-IV residents rotating on the service.