Training in endoscopic ultrasonography: An Asian perspective

Training of endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) in Asia faces two major challenges: (i) the ever-increasing demand for skills to handle a growing range of interventional EUS procedures; and (ii) a continual shortage of EUS training programs. As the therapeutic application of EUS continues to expand, the need to train more new endosonographers and upgrade skills of existing ones has become more critical than ever before. A formal fellowship to acquire EUS knowledge and skills in an advanced endoscopy center has always been perceived as the best way of training novices, but such opportunities remain limited in most Asian countries. To keep up with the pace of development in EUS, more short-term EUS programs have been conducted across Asia in recent years. Such programs are generally intensive and may combine didactic lectures, live-case demonstrations, and hands-on training on phantoms, or live animal models for teaching. Although not as rigorous as conventional full-time EUS fellowships, such short-term programs are not necessarily inferior in quality. With courses offered from basic to advanced levels, and at regular intervals, busy practising endoscopists have the flexibility to attend the course that best matches their individual levels of experience, learn at their own pace and acquire EUS knowledge and skills over as many courses as desired. This open-ended progressive learning model is more agile than established fixed-term learning models and is expected to adapt better to future needs.