Hospital and City: All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur.

Duration: 1 year duration.

Number of seats: 2 seats every year. Exam usually takes place in the July-August period every year.

Diagnostic exposure: The department is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. There are 2 CT scanners (Siemens 128-slice dual source dual energy), one 3T GE MRI scanner, with another 3T MRI scanner which will be functional in March 2022. There are many high-end USG machines like supersonic aixplorer series, Philips Epic Elite, GE venue and GE logiq S8 machines are available.

During the tenure, there are monthly rotations amongst various postings. In general, CT posting is for 5-6 months, MRI for 2-3 months, USG posting for 2-3 months and fluoroscopy/mammography posting for 1 month. There is no specific abdominal radiology related work alone in each posting. Fellows are expected to report all subspeciality cases in their respective postings, while focussing particularly on their own subspecialities. During CT posting, fellows report approximately 10-12 abdominal/abdominothoracic cases per day. During MRI rotation, mostly 6-7 MRIs have to reported per day out of which generally 2-3 are abdominal/pelvic cases. In addition to these, cases written by JR’s are also to be checked by fellows/SR’s before getting checked by consultants.

Intervention and hands on exposure: There is hands-on exposure to non-vascular interventions like pigtail insertions, CT and USG guided biopsies, liver abscess drainage, USG guided FNAC’s etc, depending on your interest. No hands-on vascular intervention exposure is however possible, observing abdomen related interventions like DIPPS, TIPPS, PTBD, portal vein embolization, aneurysm coiling etc is encouraged by the consultants.

Academic activities and multi-disciplinary meets: Weekly seminars are conducted every Monday morning, apart from weekly journal clubs. Moderating the seminars of junior residents is also the fellows’ responsibility.

Abdominal fellows conduct and attend many multi-disciplinary inter departmental meets like radio-surgical gastro meet, radio-urology meet, radio- general surgery meet, radio-medical gastro meet etc. Various difficult and interesting cases are discussed in these meets wherein referring physicians/surgeons clarify questions related to diagnosis, management and resectability. Differential diagnosis of various rare and interesting cases, any further investigations required etc are also discussed in these meets.  

Duty hours and emergencies/on call duties: Official duty hours are from 9am to 5pm. You however have to be in the department till 8-9 pm for academic work and for completing reporting, especially in CT and MRI postings.

There are 2-3 call duties (24 hour) per month, with the post duty day given off.

Fees, salary and leaves:

Fees 50,000 INR (one time). There is a two-lakh bond which has to be paid to the institute if you leave the course mid-way.

Salary – approximately 1,25,000 INR including HRA.

Leaves – 24 casual leaves are given to fellows in an academic year.

Accommodation provided or not: Accommodation is provided on the basis of availability; married candidates are preferred. If you live in the AIIMS campus hostel, HRA of ~12,000 INR will be deducted from the salary per month. Accommodation is not an issue even if hostel rooms are not available, with many furnished flats/PG’s are available within 2-3 km radius of AIIMS.

Tips on how to secure the fellowship: The notifications for entrance examinations are put on the AIIMS Jodhpur website https://www.aiimsjodhpur.edu.in/courses.php.

The entrance exam is a two-step process. The first step comprises of a written MCQ based test of 80 marks which is followed by a viva/interview (20 marks). Total 80 questions are asked in written MCQ exam, mostly from abdomen subspeciality only. The MCQ books which were helpful to me were Grainger and Allison MCQ and Get through final FRCR part A MCQ books.

When do the interviews/exams happen: Exam occurs in the month of July/ August every year. MCQ exam and interview usually occur on the same day. Written exam takes place in morning (duration 1.5 hours), following which the exam result is displayed and candidates are shortlisted for an interview in ratio of 1:6 as per vacancy. The final result is displayed on the AIIMS, Jodhpur official site after approximately 15days of the exam.

Pros and cons:

Pros- There is a very good working environment. All the teachers are not only great in their expertise but are also excellent mentors. They are always ready to help whenever required. There is a vast plethora of difficult and rare cases are available in each subspeciality, especially in abdominal subspeciality for abdominal fellow. In addition to getting an additional qualification, you will also get one year teaching experience in an educational institute as a senior resident.

Cons- Though the diagnostic exposure is excellent, there is negligible vascular interventional exposure as the fellowship is purely in diagnostic radiology.

Your personal experience at the fellowship: It was a great experience working at AIIMS, Jodhpur, learning radiology under the guidance of extremely knowledgeable and ever helping mentors. I will surely recommend the fellowship to everyone who has special interest in cross sectional abdominal imaging as it well help you grow both academically and personally.

Any additional comments/ does it add value over MD /DNB degree: It surely adds immense value to my curriculum vitae and my knowledge as a diagnostic radiologist. Although radiology is very vast and ever learning branch, this one-year training in such an esteemed institute has made my grip over the subject much stronger.

Dr Yamini Wadhwa

MBBS, MD, DNB Radiodiagnosis

Fellow Abdominal Radiology, AIIMS Jodhpur

You can contact me for further information on my email id – yaminiwadhwa5@gmail.com. 😊