AADO Asian Fellowship Programme 2015
Report from Dr. Rakesh John

26 October - 20 November 2015

It is a report from Dr. Rakesh John, one of the successful applicants of AADO Asian Fellowship Programme in Queen Elizabeth Hospital at Hong Kong, who had a visit there on 26 October - 20 November 2015.

I feel privileged to have completed the AADO Trauma fellowship at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kowloon. At the outset I would like to thank my Professor and mentor Dr. MS Dhillon for his guidance and my seniors Dr. Siddhartha Sharma, Dr. Vishal Kumar and Dr. Prateek Behera, who being recent AADO fellows, gave me excellent guidance and survival tips which came in very handy and helped me save time and money in HK. My co-fellows were Dr. Kuldeep Malik from Delhi and Dr. Rahul Gupta from Ludhiana. I arrived on 25th October, 2015 which was a Sunday (please take A 22 Bus from airport to Jordan station which is 3 times cheaper than metro) and was provided accommodation at the Nursing hostel (3-bed room) which was quite comfortable and cheap (with facilities of kitchen, canteen and laundry). Arrangements were in place to provide us hospital ID card, authorisation keys for hospital and hostel, locker keys etc. and the process was entirely hassle-free; the authorities were friendly and cordial to us.  

Next day morning, we met Dr. Shen who gave us a brief overview of the hospital complex and a few helpful tips for our stay. We attended OT on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and OPD on Wednesday and Friday. Over the 4-week period we observed trauma surgeries of a wide variety in Dr. Shen’s OT- ankle fractures, proximal and distal tibia articular fractures, intra-medullary nailing of tibia, olecranon fractures, patella fractures, periprosthetic fractures of hip, pertrochanteric fractures of hip, neck femur fractures etc. to name a few. We were also lucky to witness state of the art computer navigation assisted pelvi-acetabular surgery in Dr. Lee’s OT and also a few arthroscopy, arthroplasty and foot & ankle surgeries. 

Dr Shen is a great teacher and a passionate orthopaedic surgeon. His trauma surgery expertise, insight, pre-operative planning and meticulous approach to each case are exemplary. Every morning, we had meaningful discussions on a number of cases where Dr Shen emphasized the importance of careful pre-operative planning. In each case, I had the opportunity to discuss treatment options, observe the procedure and discuss post-operative regimes. Moreover, he is a wonderful human being who is down to earth, friendly with no unnecessary airs and blessed with the rare virtue of patience. He patiently listened to all our doubts and cleared it in detail. Dr Shen taught us several handy, practical tips on patient positioning, surgical approach planning, fracture reduction methods, intra-operative imaging etc.

In the OPD, we had the opportunity to discuss follow-up of a wide range of trauma cases ranging from the mundane to the challenging cases. Also, Dr. Shen has a wide range of excellent PowerPoint presentations on almost all topics in Orthopaedic trauma which we went through religiously. We would read a presentation and then discuss it with Dr. Shen in between cases; this exercise gradually helped us iron out wrinkles in our trauma knowledge and planning process. We were also lucky to attend a workshop on total hip arthroplasty by direct anterior approach by Professor Cruezer from USA which was a very interesting session.

I thank my co-fellows Dr. Kuldeep Malik and Dr.Rahul Gupta who made me feel at home away from home and I will cherish the personal and professional bonds formed with them during this journey. I would like to thank the staff of QEH, including Dr KB Lee, Dr Ivan Ip, Dr Diane Tai and Dr Iris for making my stay in Hong Kong educative, memorable and enjoyable. I would also like to express my gratitude to the AADO secretariat for giving me this opportunity and Ms Terry Leung who guided me through the application process as well as the visa process. Thanks to her prompt and efficient assistance, I could manage the daunting paperwork quickly.

Overall, I would rate this fellowship highly and would recommend it to budding young trauma surgeons who have a thirst to refine their skills. It would have been great if we had the chance to scrub in cases which was not possible due to licensing issues but otherwise a great learning oppurtunity.

Dr. Rakesh John
Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India