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AADO Asian Fellowship Programme 2014
Final Report from Dr Samarth Mittal
06-24 October 2014

It is a report from Dr Samarth Mittal, one of the successful applicants of AADO Asian Fellowship Programme in Queen Elizabeth Hospital at Hong Kong, who had a visit there on 06-24 October 2014.

First and foremost, I would like to thank the AADO organization for conducting a fellowship program aimed at increasing the international exposure to trainees.

The entire program was very well organised. We were given the fellowship letters well in advance and as a result, there was ample time to plan the trip and get the required permissions.
Also, I was informed about the other two Indian fellows who were visiting during the same time duration. Each one was informed about the others email address, thus enabling effective communication between us. Accordingly, I booked my flight so as to coincide fairly well with the one which Dr. Siddharth Sharma from PGI, Chandigarh planned to board. We met at the airport and continued our journey to the hostel together.

On arrival, Hong Kong welcomed us with pleasant weather. With clear instructions in the form of a powerpoint presentation from Terry, getting to the hostel on a weekend was easy inspite of a language barrier.

The hostels which were to be our accommodation for the next 3 weeks were comfortable with all the basic amenities including furniture, closet, airconditioner and a common laundry, kitchen, bathroom and toilets.

On the first working day we met Dr. Shen as per the emailed program. Due to the difficulty communicating in English with the predominantly Chinese speaking population, Dr. Shen stood apart in his impeccable communication skills. I was in awe of his planned approach and dynamic personality.

He introduced to us the hospital working with a short overview and helped us complete the formalities of registration of the hostel accommodation, Hospital Id card. He was kind enough to arrange operation theatre (OT) lockers and access security cards for us all by himself.

The schedule comprised of OTs on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and out patient department (OPD) on Wednesday and Friday with weekends off. Each morning we reported to Dr. Shen and a stipulated amount of time was spent clearing our doubts and grilling us about various topics. He conducted classes for us everyday during this time showing us interesting cases and forcing us to think differently. Dr. Shen spent a lot of time and took great efforts to plan each case impeccably, leaving no room for complacency.

We were able to observe a lot of geriatric pertrochanteric fractures managed with Gamma nail and cemented Austin Moore arthroplasty and cemented Unipolar arthroplasty. In addition, we observed a few cases of humeral nailing, patella fractures, extraarticular humeral fractures, olecranon fractures and partial articular fracture of the distal radius. It was interesting to observe management of few cases of intraarticular distal tibial fractures. Dr. Shen’s planning of these cases and his way of going about it with critical review of each method of reduction and fixation with emphasis on pros and cons of each one of them completely stands out. His promotion of thinking out-of-the-box and laterally in management of these cases was refreshing and requires great admiration, often challenging the established concepts of management.
OPD days were busy but to bridge the language barrier that we had with the patients, Dr. Shen was kind enough to hand over his laptop which had a lot of very good presentations. The presentations on the principle of “Span-scan-plan”, atypical femoral fractures and subcapital fractures post fixation of pertrochanteric fractures need a special mention here. Sadly, due to the strict guidelines related to medical licensing, we were not able to scrub and assist in any of the cases.

Finally I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Shen and his trauma team for the fellowship and Terry for her wonderful managing skills and round the clock answer to emails regarding any queries that I had. I cannot thank AADO and Dr. Shen enough for introducing me to my Co- fellows and now very good friends Dr. Mohit Bansal and Dr. Siddharth Sharma with whom I enjoyed my stay in Hong Kong thoroughly and who supported me as my family away from home. I cherish the time spent with them and the long discussions we had which will help me grow both professionally and personally.

Bringing US dollars along is a good idea as they have the best exchange rate here.
It is advisable not to exchange currency at the airport who charge a much higher commission fees.
Chung King Mansion is one of the few good places for Indian vegetarian food here and currency exchange.

It would be a highly beneficial and more fruitful for fellows if provision of scrubbing in OT’s is somehow arranged.
A meeting with the faculty and residents would be much useful in the beginning of fellowship for better interaction with them during the fellowship.