WGO
Director: Professor Guido Costamagna
Introduction:The WGO Training Center in Rome, the European Endoscopy Training Centre (EETC), is a comprehensive center fully devoted to teaching and training in digestive endoscopy. The ongoing progress and improvement of modern devices generate new technologies which require a continuous training of the operators who work in the field of Digestive Endoscopy. For this reason there is a constant request for the training and re-qualification of medical and surgical specialists through advanced and highly specialized training courses. The idea of creating a Center in Rome entirely devoted to the teaching of digestive endoscopy has its roots in the well established and long-lasting experience in training activities that have taken place over the past 24 years at the Gemelli University Hospital’s Digestive Endoscopy Unit. From 1987 to 2011, more than two hundred endoscopists have spent monthly to yearly training periods at the Gemelli’s Digestive Endoscopy Unit. Moreover the same Unit has organized, since the early nineties, 126 courses on therapeutic ERCP with close to 1,000 participants and 13 annual editions of the European Workshop on Therapeutic Digestive Endoscopy and Radiology with live video demonstrations gathering every year approximately 300 attendants from several countries worldwide. A permanent structure fully dedicated to the purpose of teaching and training in digestive endoscopy was therefore the natural complement of this intense activity. The European Endoscopy Training Centre (EETC) (www.eetc.it), a comprehensive center fully devoted to teaching and training in digestive endoscopy, was created in July 2003 at the Catholic University School of Medicine in Rome, Italy. Since its opening and WGO endorsement in July 2003, the EETC has organized 159 courses for endoscopists, for a total of 1,880 participants and 15 courses for nurses. Main Objectives and Goals:
Facilities:The center is a permanent structure fully dedicated to the purpose of teaching and training in digestive endoscopy and is located in the center of the Catholic University’s campus, close to the animal lab, in a fully renovated old building. The building has two floors extending over approximately 500 square meters. The heart of the EETC is situated at the basement floor: there is an operating theater with five working stations fully equipped with state-of-the-art Olympus video-endoscopes, Erbe electrosurgical generators with Argon Plasma Coagulation, and medical gases, where trainees can perform on animal models, under appropriate tutoring, a variety of therapeutic endoscopic procedures. A large number of different endoscopic procedures can be carried out on the isolated upper and lower GI tract of the swine by using the Erlangen EASIE model: polypectomy, mucosectomy, hemostatic procedures on bleeding vessels, APC treatments, self-expandable metal stent insertion, antireflux procedures, bile duct sphicterotmy and stenting, etc. If strictly necessary, the EETC is also fully certified and authorized to use live animals under general anesthesia to perform special procedures. The presence of a vertinary doctor specialized in animal care guarantees that all ethical requirements are fully respected. Additionally, trainees can practice with the Olympus high fidelity screen based Simulator. The basement floor also comprises two cloakrooms, the secretariat and the scientific direction office. On the first floor, an auditorium for 20 - 25 people, with updated Audio-Visual equipment controlled by a SMART Symposium and permanently linked via Intranet to the Endoscopy suite located within the University Hospital Policlinic A. Gemelli allows theoretical teaching as well as live transmission of endoscopic procedures performed by the local staff or by invited guest faculties. A small specialized library-meeting room and another room equipped with four personal computer working stations for individualized electronic interactive teaching are also located at the first floor. As a result, the EETC represents a unique geographical entity where all the steps of the teaching process that should precede hands-on experience on patients may be replicated. Areas of Training:
Contact:
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The WGO would like to give special thanks to COOK for their support and sponsorship of the WGO Rome Training Center. |
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