What does fellowship-trained mean?

Upon completion of a dermatology residency, a physician can apply to participate in a Micrographic Surgery & Dermatologic Oncology (Mohs) fellowship training program. Qualified applicants undergo an extremely competitive review and selection process to obtain a 1- to 2-year fellowship position with a program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Fellowships accredited by these organizations safeguard the standards of Micrographic Surgery & Dermatologic Oncology (Mohs) by ensuring that fellows-in-training are properly trained and acquire the necessary expertise to perform the Mohs procedure.

Accredited programs follow a structured curriculum that includes graded responsibility, operative and non-operative education, and exposure to long-term results, recurrences, and complications.

Fellowship training programs are designed to impart experience and judgment into each graduate. By design, these programs are comprehensive and rigorous because skin cancer itself occurs in a diversity of forms, degrees, and areas of the body. To complete an ACMS-approved fellowship, a physician must:

• Participate in a minimum of 500 Mohs surgery cases
• Learn to accurately interpret slides of tissue samples that have been removed during Mohs surgery
• Perform a wide breadth of reconstructions, ranging from simple closures to complicated multi-step repairs

Because fellows-in-training undergo training over months, they gain a breadth of exposure – under the guidance of a qualified Mohs surgeon – that includes rare tumor pathology, difficult tumor locations, and complex wound reconstruction. This fellowship training provides a depth of experience unmatched by other Mohs programs.

Excerpted from the American College of Mohs Surgery website
www.skincancermohssurgery.org/why-choose