By Dr Tarang Kulkarani Edited by Dr Jateen Ukrani
Dr Tarang kulkarni is a FMG from Russia who passed out MBBS in 2012. He found Freeassociation.in very useful in choosing DNB Respiratory medicine as a career at Fortis hospitals, Kolkatta and praises the department for being one of the best in the field of respiratory medicine.
My story
I was a foreign medical graduate, Passed out from Russia in 2012 from the Smolensk state medical academy.My preparation for the FMGE screening test helped me largely to get 1669 rank in my first attempt.I was actually very lucky to end up here.I was always inclined toward medicine but being from a very large medical family all adviced me against taking up general medicine and june session had very few seats of medicine. At my rank only this seat of respiratory medicine was left and I just went for it. I being from Mumbai ,never knew anything about Kolkata. When i came here , I saw that the department was decent and the guides were well known in the field of pulmonology.I had read the respiratory medicine section on freeassociation.in and I recall the first line of the description, It said that resp med is same in govt as well as private institutions. Luckily this seat remained and i just took it
The Department of Respiratory Medicine
3 consultants and 4 associate consultants in respiratory medicine
1 professor and 2 consultants from outside for classes
1 primary n 1 secondary in June session
We are the first batch here , so no pass rate for now.
We work under Dr. Raja dhar who is one of the most famous pulmonologists in eastern India )was consultant pulmonologist to the prime minister) and Professor Dr A.G. Ghosal from a Govt Medical college. They are our two guides for the DNB programme. Working in fortis gives a great advantage in medicine specially as in the newer techniques and newer guidelines are followed. Dr. Raja dhar takes care that the department follows all the current and latest guidelines.
The departmental set up here is better than most colleges. Fortis here has all the renowned names in eastern India, I think they have applied for a DNB surgery and DNB urology seat but accreditation is pending.
2 classes a week , one by Dr A G ghosal every Wednesday , Dr Raja dhar takes clincal classes during the rounds and Dr Ansuman mukhopadhyay ( another consultant) he takes classes on TB. So roughly 2 formal classes every week
Here is a video about our department from Dr Raja Dhar(Sourced from youtube)
Work & Exposure
8-8 monday to Saturday. One Sunday a month we have to be there and One night every week
The Department is really good with 6-8 bronchoscopies / 4 days a week.I am already done with the orientation course in bronchoscopies and iam doing basic stuff with bronchoscopes now that is after 4 months of joining. The secondary candidates can perform bronchoscopies independently. Argon plasma coagulation with Cryotherapy procedures are done in our department, Only 4 other respiratory departments in the country do all these procedures.We have 2 sleep study labs ,so a lot of patients of sleep disorders too come to us for treatment with almost 4-5 sleep studies every week. Other procedures like thoracoscopy, EBUS(endobronchial ultrasound) plus TBNA(transbronchial needle aspiration) bronchial brush biopsy, trucut lung biopsies are done routinely.
Other procedures like pleural fluid aspiration, taking ABG samples, femoral lines, catheterisations are mostly first year stuff.. Chest tube for the second year but I was lucky that my seniors taught me chest drains this year itself. Our department is also very research oriented. Almost all big pulmonology conferences have atleast one paper from our department and Dr Raja dhar has presentations in almost all national level conferences.
Stipend is according to state guidelines which can be found here in this blog and no accommodation is provided so fees is 70k.
Risk of TB
Risk is something that comes with the subject. Its like saying radiation exposure with radiology. In the end its all about how well you handle personal prophylaxis. But Fortis is very particular in isolating active pulmonary TB cases in negative pressure rooms and We’ve followed the similar pattern with the swine flu cases this season.
Other Recommended institutes for DNB Respiratory Medicine(not in order of preference)
Pd Hinduja in mumbai,
Nizam hyderabad,
LRS Delhi,
Apollo chennai,
Lilavati Mumbai
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Good institute for dnb respiratory medicine