Hospital/Imaging Centre and City: Tata Medical Center, Kolkata

Duration: 2 years

About the fellowship: So it basically started off like this. I was working part time in a scan center, fresh after passing my DNB. And pretty soon, I realised that it was not my cup of tea. I could not accept the lack of growth or rather the stagnation of my academic progress. It was then that I came across this wonderful fellowship program which coincidentally happened to be in my home city i.e Kolkata. The year was 2020 and the date was 20^th February when I joined this course. This eventually turned out to be one of the best decisions of my career. It is overall a 2 year fellowship program. Though that sounds long but trust me, it is worth every bit of it. The exposure that we get across all modalities including CT, MRI, and Mammography which are the cornerstones of cross sectional imaging in Oncology is immense. Throughout the duration of the course, one gets to report all kinds of pathologies involving almost every system. This enriches not only our knowledge of Radiology but also gives us a tremendous insight on to the clinical aspect. No only diagnostics, there is posting in cath lab as well where we get an insight into procedures like PTBD, biliary stenting, PCN, TACE, TARE, embolization etc which we are otherwise not accustomed with in our postgraduate life. Each posting ranges from 3-4 months divided across the 2 years. Apart from Cath lab , there is a good amount of focus on USG guided procedures also like pigtail, FNAC, Biopsies etc which are done in huge numbers.

Academic activities and multi-disciplinary meets: There are weekly academic activities in the form of seminars, case discussions, journal clubs which happen at least twice every week including talks from both fellows as well as faculty. In addition to that, each of us get allocated a particular MDT specialty wise which we have to attend on a weekly basis for discussion of complicated cases. This experience is truly beneficial for widening our knowledge of the subject. The fellows get rotations of MDT of various systems at a gap of every 3-4 months so that we can focus on a wide range of cases.

Duty hours and emergencies/on call duties: The duty hours are naturally a bit extensive ranging from 10-11 hours which of course one has to accept in such a program. However, being an oncological set up the emergency on calls are slightly easier and we got around 3 on calls per month with weekend on calls every alternate month and the leaves are usually around 20 non-academic leaves per year.

Fees, salary, leaves and accommodation: The stipend is around 70-75k based on the experience with which we join the course. Finding an accommodation is not that difficult as there are multiple complexes in the vicinity of the hospital and for the first 14 days of joining one can avail the guest house provided by the hospital till we can make our own arrangements.

Tips on how to secure the fellowship: The mode of entry to the fellowship is based on an interview and is usually twice a year but depends on the existing vacancies. In order to get shortlisted for the interview, one needs to send his/her CV to the registered email address given on the hospital website.

Your personal experience at the fellowship: All in all, I feel it’s an excellent program that gives us a definite edge after passing our MD or DNB with a wider spectrum of knowledge especially covering body imaging and non vascular interventions. I hope this helps the future aspirants to come to a conclusion about the program and more people can reap the benefits in the times to come.

Dr. Sayan Sarkar, DNB Radiology, Fellowship in Oncoimaging and Oncointervention

Read another review of the fellowship here.