A reunion in Melbourne
A reunion with former shoulder fellows at the DePuy Delta Extend Conference in Melbourne.
Pictured are Kieran Hirpara, now in Dublin, Jillian Lee, in Auckland, and Noel Peter, in Oxford. It is rewarding, and a privilege, to be involved in training the next generation of surgeons, and seeing where they end up is the best part of it.
What a shoulder fellowship is
A fellowship is the period of subspecialty training a surgeon undertakes after completing general orthopaedic training and qualifying as a specialist. By that point the surgeon can already operate independently across orthopaedics. The fellowship narrows that to one region, in this case the shoulder and upper limb.
The year is spent working alongside the surgeon whose practice it is: in clinic, seeing how patients are assessed and selected for treatment; in theatre, assisting and then operating under supervision; and afterwards, following those same patients through their recovery. Volume is part of the point, because conditions a general orthopaedic surgeon meets a few times a year are seen weekly in a subspecialty practice, and genuinely uncommon problems are seen at all. Research is usually part of the year as well. Individual results vary, and a fellowship is as much about learning which patients should not be operated on as about technique.
Why these connections last
Fellows commonly travel internationally for the year, and the three pictured are now in practice in Dublin, Auckland and Oxford. Alumni of a fellowship tend to stay in contact afterwards, partly for the obvious reason and partly because it is useful.
A surgeon who has trained in the same unit shares a way of examining a shoulder and a vocabulary for describing it, which makes an informal second opinion on a difficult case straightforward to ask for. Conference meetings such as this one are where those conversations happen. It is also how a unit finds out what became of the techniques it taught, since fellows go on to adapt them in different health systems.
Related information
- Our shoulder fellowship page
- Our research page
- Our post on the fellows reunion at SESA 2022
- Our post on the DePuy Delta Extend Conference