Vitreo-Retinal Surgery Fellowship review@ National Institute of Ophthalmology (NIO), Pune

Duration 2 yrs

2 fellows taken every year- 1 FNB fellow (through FNB exam) and 1 institutional fellow (only interview)

Exit exam + for FNB candidate 

Stipend 90k

Phaco training included 

You are initially put on phaco simulator for phaco training. They also have a VR simulator and Sir sees how you do on the simulator first before starting you on live patients.

VR OT runs every day.

You are given steps in all retina surgeries till end of fellowship, however no chances to do independent cases.

You get lots of retinal lasers and intravit injections.

OP exposure is good, you see every kind of retina case here.

ROP exposure is very less, another consultant sees the cases and you can request him to teach you screening.

Oncology exposure NIL 

Very few scleral buckles done here

No training in SFIOLs (even though they are done by the consultants)

You are trained to put iris claws

Cataract OT is once a week, you get 1 case per OT, you get only normal NS 2 cataracts, no advanced cases.

So that's around 160-170 phacos over 2 years.

You are allowed to manage your cataract complications (iris claw training+)

Work timings long, starts at 7 am can go on even till 9 pm depending on pt load and when OT finishes.

All Sundays are working days, you have to come in for research or paper related work every Sunday.

No public holidays given.

On call- you have night duties in the first 6 months of joining... but you hardly get any emergencies.

They have 3 other centres within the city so you will have periphery postings by turn.

Academics- no formal classes, mostly self learning.

You get to do steps in all cases but not given independent cases at all so you will need to join elsewhere after fellowship to learn to operate independently and get better. 

Also, phaco refinement will be required (for advanced cataract cases) post fellowship.