ISKSAA Lancashire Travelling Fellowship 2022

I would like to express my profound regards to Dr. P S Bajaj sir and Dr. Lalit Maini sir for selecting me for the prestigious ISKSAA Lancashire Travelling Fellowship 2022.

I did my fellowship with two other great colleagues Dr. Sumanth from Bengaluru and Dr. Arnab from Kolkata. Three of us reached Manchester airport together on 21st May 2023, from where we rented a cab to Burnley. We had rented a house which was walking distance from Burnley General Hospital. The weather in countryside was fabulous and we were fortunate enough to do our fellowship during British summers.

Our first day started at Royal Blackburn Hospital with our introduction to our fellowship coordinator Mr. Makaram Srinivasan (Mak as everyone calls him), who gave us a warm welcome to his department and introduced us to all his colleagues. Mr. Makaram is a stalwart shoulder surgeon and we got to learn a lot of intricacies of shoulder replacement (both anatomical and reverse arthroplasty) and arthroscopic shoulder surgeries (like cuff repair and labral repair) from him during our fellowship. East Lancashire NHS Trust runs two hospitals one is Burnley General Hospital, which is for orthopaedic elective surgeries and the other one is Royal Blackburn Hospital, which is for trauma surgeries. We rotated between the two hospitals during our training using the free bus shuttle, which is scheduled at regular intervals.

During our tenure, we got to learn many tips and tricks of hip and knee replacement from other consultants: Mr. Mohan, Mr. Sarin and Mr. Kamath, all of them made us feel at home. We had many lunches together in the hospital cafeteria.

Apart from theatres, we also attended clinics with Mr. Mak and Mr. Sarin, which was an experience in itself. We also attended Department Meets during afternoons, where treatment plan used to be formulated for the difficult cases. All the hospital staff were very friendly and helped us in getting oriented to the working environment.

We were fortunate enough to explore local town in the evenings and we also visited London and Edinburg during our weekends. Overall, this fellowship was a great learning experience and helped me boost my professional growth and, I carry beautiful and everlasting memories from this fellowship.

Dr. Kritesh Mishra
Assistant Professor
Department of Orthopaedics
LLRM Medical College, Meerut
Ph. 7906665765