Overview

The Endourology Fellowship at UCSF under the joint direction of Drs. Marshall Stoller and David Bayne, aims to train innovative, superb clinicians and researchers and provide them with the tools to pursue careers in academic urology and research. The program seeks to attract bright, committed, and compassionate applicants from diverse backgrounds, who aspire to become future leaders in this specialty. The program has trained fellows since 1989 and was accredited by the Endourological Society starting in 2018. The recruitment goal of the training program is to recruit one fellow each for a one-year training program. The endourology faculty at UCSF includes Drs. Marshall Stoller, David Bayne, Justin Ahn, Max Bowman, David Tzou, and Kyle Spradling. The fellow will work with the faculty to develop an individualized training curriculum that is tailored to the fellow’s career goals and adherent to fellowship certification standards of the Endourology Society.

Clinical Training Opportunities

The fellows’ clinical training includes exposure to all aspects of medical treatment of urinary stone disease, surgical endourologic techniques, and mastery of laparoscopic and minimally invasive surgery before completing their fellowship. Graduating fellows will be proficient in both fluoroscopic and ultrasound guided percutaneous renal access techniques from both the supine and prone positions. They also will gain proficiency in advanced ureteroscopy and holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) as well as robotic surgery and advanced laparoscopy. In one year, fellows typically complete >100 URS, >50 PCNL, >50 HoLEP and >20 laparoscopy/robotic cases. 

Research Training Opportunities

For the research aspect of fellowship training, fellows are exposed to a broad range of basic, clinical, and translational research work. They have ample opportunity to be productive, publishing manuscripts as well as presenting their findings at national and regional scientific meetings. Their training will include mastering strategies to optimize study design and the basics of grantsmanship.

Multiple federally funded projects are currently ongoing that provide fellows with a vast array of areas on which to focus, whether it be clinical, basic, translational, or device development research. Dr. Stoller’s NIH funded LAUNCH Program (Laboratory for Accelerated Urinary Stone Care and Health Innovation) provides fellows with broad access to cutting-edge translational platforms—including papillary imaging, Drosophila stone modeling, and advanced tissue and biomarker analysis. Through LAUNCH, fellows have the opportunity to participate in or lead projects in early-stage discovery science, device development, pilot clinical protocols, and multidisciplinary collaborations that span basic science, engineering, and industry. The program’s infrastructure supports fellows in generating preliminary data, developing pilot studies, and shaping ideas into fundable research trajectories. Dr. Bayne leads an NIH funded career development grant through which fellows will have the opportunity to collaborate in health services research and clinical trial design, as well as international projects in global urological surgery training and infrastructure development in Sub Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.

Based on their individual interests, fellows select a primary research focus that serves as a foundation for building long-term investigative skills. Training includes protocol development, device design, laboratory technique acquisition, performance of experiments, clinical data management, and preparation of manuscripts and national meeting presentations. Fellows are expected to publish in peer-reviewed journals and present at regional, national, and international scientific forums.

This combined approach to fellowship training utilizing both rich clinical and research experiences will provide graduating fellows with the tools to pursue long and productive careers in endourology.