International Travelling Fellowship: The opportunity to plan and execute a teaching programme in Nepal
Dr Deepak Subedi and Dr Rishikesan Ramaesh were the winners of the 2020-2022 International Travelling Fellowship. They visited Bir Hospital in Nepal to deliver their project, Oncological Imaging – Past, Present and Future.
Our plans for the International Travelling Fellowship initially hit a bump in the road with the Covid pandemic, but over the last year we’ve finally been able to begin our international activity. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to engage with the radiology and oncology fraternity in a region of the world where we both have personal ties.
This was a major motivating factor afforded by the International Travelling Fellowship. The ability to do so with support from The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) and to create a long-standing, sustainable and impactful connection was one not to be missed.
Back in 2020, it was hugely exciting to hear that our project proposal was successful, but unfortunately – shortly after receiving this news – Covid forced us to put our plans on hold. After a long hiatus, we were delighted to hear back from our sponsors in Nepal with an offer of a visit in April 2022. It put the project into motion, and we were able to run the exciting teaching programme we had planned.
Engaging local radiology and oncology trainees
Our Fellowship was set in Bir Hospital, which is one of the largest teaching hospitals in Kathmandu, Nepal. The aim of the project was to engage local radiology and oncology trainees and provide a wide-ranging teaching programme around the theme of ‘Imaging in Oncology’. We wanted to cover key concepts in oncological imaging but give the delegates a flavour of more advanced and cutting-edge imaging techniques that they may not have had much exposure to, such as PET imaging.
We have recently returned from our first visit to Nepal, where we conducted a three-day training course attended by over 80 delegates from across the city. We were fortunate to be able to invite some inspiring local doctors and oncologists to share their experiences of working in oncology and radiology in Nepal. Over the three days, we ran sessions on a wide variety of topics, including head and neck oncology, thoracic malignancies and abdominal imaging. It was a very busy course, but so satisfying to see how much the trainees and delegates got out of it.
Cancer Imaging
Our plans are already in place for the new year. We’re now preparing for our next visit to Nepal in February 2023, which will involve further teaching on cancer imaging. We also aim to conduct a PET-CT workshop in Bir Hospital in Kathmandu, as well as to teach in other locations.
It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience planning and executing the teaching programme. It was a pleasure to meet and help teach so many enthusiastic trainees and to have the opportunity to visit a place like Nepal. There was a lot of interest among local trainees to seek out training opportunities and experiences in the UK, and we have been exploring ways we could make this happen.
We are thankful to several colleagues from Edinburgh, who provided us with pre-recorded state-of-art lectures in various aspects of oncology and imaging. It was also a surreal experience when some of our Edinburgh radiologists managed to join in via Microsoft Teams for Q&A sessions despite the patchy Wi-Fi signal!
The International Travelling Fellowship has been one of the highlights of our career so far and we are very much looking forward to going back to Nepal.
Applications for the 2023-25 International Travelling Fellowship are closed.
