To cater to growing demand of super-specialists in tertiary care health set-up, Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) will be offering 12 new fellowship courses this academic session.
The institute will introduce four super-specialty courses,four post-doctoral fellowships, and four broad specialty courses this academicsession.
An official while giving details said that doctors canenroll themselves in one of the courses in order to acquire skill-sets oftenrequired in a tertiary care setup.
The courses that the institute will offered include DM innephrology, MCh in surgical gastroenterology, DNB in neuro-anesthesiology, DNBin cardiac anesthesiology, fellowship in minimal access surgery, spine surgery,hand and microsurgery, interventional cardiology, MD in emergency medicine, DNBin anatomy, DNB in physiology and DNB in ENT.
Director SKIMS, Prof Omar Javed Shah, while giving detailssaid that super-specialty courses and post-doctoral fellowships provideopportunities to gain hands–on experience in advanced sub-specialty domains.
“Multiple factors over several decades have led to ourcurrent state of medical education and reliance on fellowship training. Some ofthese are attributable to influences outside of training and others aredirectly related to changes in medical residency training,” he said.
He added that regardless of these factors, doctors maychoose fellowship training in order to focus their clinical practice and tobecome experts in their particular sub-specialty of medicine and surgery.
A senior doctor said there was a high demand in medicalcolleges and training institutes for such courses.
“There is a widespread perception that many resident doctorslacking the skills necessary to confidently perform many advanced laparoscopicoperations. Fellowships have the potential to bridge the gaps found in manyresidencies,” he said.
He added that the fellowships provide the graduatingresident with an opportunity to master skills, gain confidence and progressiveautonomy, and receive further mentorship.
The Director SKIMS said all the trainings and fellowshipsbeing offered were recognized under Indian Medical Council Act.
He said the quality research output from SKIMS was expectedto increase dramatically with introduction of these courses.
“This will increase the visibility of SKIMS on the researchmap in particular and augment the research output from India in general,” hesaid.
The advanced courses, an official at the Institute said,will also address shortage of manpower required to run five new medicalcolleges and AIIMS-type institutions coming up in J&K.