ATSScholar (@atsscholar.bsky.social)

Tools, Training, and Transformation: The Synergistic Impact of Interventional Pulmonary Programs in Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship Training | ATS Scholar Gupta and colleagues (pp. 179–190) have explored an important question about the potential impact of interventional pulmonology (IP) fellowships on bronchoscopy training of pulmonary and critical care medicine (PCCM) fellows in the study “Effect of Interventional Pulmonology Fellowships on Pulmonary Critical Care Fellows’ Core Bronchoscopy Competencies” published in this issue of ATS Scholar (1). They conducted a multicenter prospective cohort assessment comparing basic bronchoscopy skill acquisition longitudinally measured using the Ontario Bronchoscopy Assessment Tool (OBAT) in pulmonary and critical care fellowship programs with and without IP fellowship programs to begin to explore their hypothesis that PCCM fellows at institutions without IP fellowships may have greater basic bronchoscopy competency than PCCM fellows at institutions with IP fellowship programs because of hands-on volume and whether there is any potential impact of IP training programs on PCCM fellowship bronchoscopy training. Although programs studied included both those with and without IP fellowship programs, this study is significantly limited by the small number of programs (2 with IP training programs and 3 without IP training programs) in the context of 44 existing IP fellowship programs in the United States, as well as a lack of heterogeneity geographically of the selected programs. Using the OBAT, the investigators compared basic bronchoscopy skill acquisition longitudinally among first-, second-, and third-year PCCM fellows and noted higher scores that were statistically significant in the second year among those in programs without IP training programs (mean [standard deviation], 4.25 [0.5]) compared with programs with IP training program (mean [standard deviation], 3.48 [0.4]) (P = 0.006), hypothesizing that those without IP fellowships may have more access to higher volumes of bronchoscopy and an increased likelihood of performing the procedure rather than participating more observationally. Nonetheless, all learners, by the completion of their third year as PCCM fellows, achieved basic bronchoscopy competency by that measure in programs both with and without IP fellowship programs. https://tinyurl.com/3zn5buem