Joining the fellowship
Dr Rohit Sane is joining the Brisbane Shoulder Fellowship programme for twelve months. He comes to us from Mumbai, India, and arrives having won awards and contributed to peer-reviewed publications.
The team he joins
He joins Chris Child, along with physiotherapist Lucy Angelini, and the wider group across QUASR, QUT and The University of Queensland.
A twelve-month fellowship covers a full year of operating lists, clinics and research, which is long enough to see the same patients through from assessment to recovery rather than catching single appointments.
What the year covers
A fellowship is undertaken after specialist orthopaedic training is complete, and concentrates on one area of the field. The year is built around operating lists and clinics, with research alongside. The fellow assists and then operates under supervision, sees patients while the decision about treatment is being made, and sees them again at intervals afterwards.
Following the same patients through is what connects a technical decision made in theatre to what happens over the following months, and that connection is difficult to learn any other way. Individual results vary.
Why a physiotherapist is part of the group
Most shoulder operations depend on rehabilitation to produce their result. The protocol after a repair, what the patient may do and when, is as much a part of the treatment as the operation itself, and it differs between procedures. A fellow who has spent time on that side of the work understands what is being asked of patients after surgery and can explain it to them properly beforehand.
Research as part of the programme
The fellowship sits alongside QUASR and research groups at QUT and The University of Queensland. Taking part in research changes how a surgeon reads the literature afterwards, because having collected data themselves they know where the weaknesses in a method lie. It also means that questions arising in clinic, where current practice is uncertain, have somewhere to go.
Related information
Dr Sane later presented research at the APOA Conference in Cairns, covered in our post on glenoid component position research. See also our shoulder fellowship, research, rehabilitation and physiotherapy pages.