Duration: 18 months. First 4 months: General Ophthal posting.  You'll be put in their peripheral centre for a month too. You'll get to start SICS surgery then. 1 OT day per week. No exposure to Oculoplasty for the first 4 months.  Next 14 months you'll be posted in Oculoplasty department.  First two months will be just opd.  Oculoplasty OT starts from third month.     The regular 1 day SICS OT and 1 day oculoplasty OT will be the norm.  If there are less fellows in the dept, you'll get more OT days as you'll be assisting the consultants in OT.  Camps:   You will have to go for camps twice or thrice a month. It'll be on weekends. Guys get more number of camps and longer camps than the ladies (ahem). They go for camps as far away as Kodungallur, Munnar etc in Kerala and Hosur in Karnataka. But some long distance camps like in Ooty and Munnar are really enjoyable and worth it.  Academics:   No formal classes. There are classes for DNBs, none for fellows. You'll have to read on your own.  No exams at the end of your fellowship.  You'll be asked to take classes for the sisters during the fellowship.  You can present cases or studies for conferences. They allow you to attend conferences only if you are presenting something.  Consultants and exposure to Oculoplasty:   The consultants are pretty chill and usually good. An odd toxic consultant maybe there. They give you DCR initially and then the lid and orbit procedures. No exposure to ocular oncology. There's a separate 1 week posting at Aravind Madurai for that at the end of your fellowship.  Duties:   Emergency night duty once in a month or two months. Other fellows and DNBs also take night duties, so it'll be quite rare to get duty often.  Cataract exposure:   SICS only. No phaco.  It starts from 3rd/4th month during your general posting. The numbers will depend upon your speed and how you pick up. One cataract OT per week till the end of your fellowship.  Can expect to do around 100 to 200 SICS by the end of your fellowship. There will be a Consultant to teach you all the steps systematically. Timings:   Opd timings are usually from 7:30am to 6pm. Some days it might go beyond too, depending on patient load.  Two 15 mins break in the morning and afternoon.  A 1 hour lunch break at noon. The short breaks may be cut depending on opd patient load. The head sister of opd decides that for you.  Emergency duty is from 6pm to 8am the next day.  Camp timings are from 1pm on Fridays or Saturdays to Sunday 2pm. Depending on the camp and transport, it'll vary.  Accommodation:  They provide hostel accommodation. It's a 30 year old hostel, cramped and as small as opd cubicles. Most fellows and DNBs survive there.  You do get decent accommodation at nearby apartments. But the rent maybe high.  Water is all hard water. You can't take a head bath with it, unless you like stiff hair. Some fellows complain of hair loss too. You'll have to find some alternatives for that (the water, not the hair).  Food:   Hospital has a canteen which provides terrible vegetarian food. You can have it if you don't have any other choice. Most people order from outside or take a mess subscription. There are decent mess subscriptions available including Jain food. Area:   The hospital is in the outskirts of Coimbatore city near the airport, so flights are easy to catch. There's also an IMAX movie theatre nearby with a few decent restaurants, so weekend chill out plans do work. There's a few restobars in the more centre of the city like 10-15kms away. My take:   Aravind Coimbatore is better than Madurai for Oculoplasty as you get to do other procedures like lid/orbit procedures than just DCR. Aravind is a hospital with a name in Ophthalmology since the last 30-40 years and the sheer patient load is something that you'll never get anywhere but if you want to be up to date with the absolute latest procedures, Aravind can be lacking in some aspects.

It's for 2 yrs Selection was by Zoom interview.  I knew how to do SICS when I joined and I got to do around 150+ phacos including lots of topical phaco as well.  Training starts with SICS and then based on your progress, they move you to phaco. They let you operate all kinds of cataract and you are also allowed to manage complications but they will not train you specifically in it. On the refractive side, I got plenty of hands on in LASIK, PRK, SMILE, INTACS, ICL, C3R. You also learn to work up for toric IOLs, how to select good candidates etc Work starts at 8 am, finishes typically by 6.30 pm but in the initial 6 months, you will work late evenings. You don't get much off-time after work. Research participation is mandatory at NN so case workups and data collation works (excels, powerpoints etc) are something you are expected to pick up. It might feel crazy but it's balanced by their conference opportunities- you can attend national or international conferences as many as you want- and the plus is you get to represent NN at the conferences which builds your professional reputation. There are of course night duties, camp duties, Sunday duties. Almost all Sunday mornings are working- after morning Refractive rounds, the rest of the day is free. Stipend is 56k per month. They require a 1 lac caution deposit upfront when you join and if you decide to drop out in between, you have to pay back all the stipend you got before you can get your certificates and leave the program.

2 years duration. Most of the surgical training happens in their trust/charitable hospital. Stipend= 75k/ month Admission fee= 2 lacs (non-refundable) First 3 to 5 months you get SICS, then they start Phaco training.  You start Phaco first with learning bimanual I&A, then you progress to Phaco tunnel construction and then topical Phaco in the last 4 to 6 months. You get around150 - 250 cases (SICS + phaco) in two years. You get exposure to all premium and latest IOLs in the market (no hands-on, though). Refractive department exposure is good and you will be doing few PRK, LASIK, SMILE, C3Rs as well. Expect to be busy with regards to research work. You get opportunities to present papers in all major national and international conferences. One minus for some fellows is that you won't be trained to handle special cases like iris claws, anterior vitrectomy etc Monetary penalties exist- For nucleus drops- you have to pay 10,000/ drop. For any camp pt OT cancel (camp pt who decides not to do sx)= 5000 charged from the fellow who went as camp doctor Penalty for leaving fellowship midway is 5 lacs + you have to return all the stipend earned till then.

Duration- 18 months, affiliated to RGUHS (Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences). There is entrance and exit exam. One of the very few institutes that train VR fellows for cataract (free hands for both SICS and Phaco). As far is retina is considered- Excellent staff with good knowledge, very good OPD load with variety of cases. Well equipped OPD and OT set up with high end machines.  Fellows get good chances for Lasers and Intravitreal injections.  Surgical chances in retina are not extensive. (Fellows get to do basic retina procedures hence there are no camp cases operated for retina surgeries and all are paid cases- unlike most fellowship institutes). ⁠All in all, Medical Retina experience is very good, surgical chances are slim. But fellows get to observe and assist all retina surgeries.  Coming to cataract surgeries- Retina fellows get near equal chances in cataract surgeries in comparison with Anterior Segment fellows.  3 - 4 night duties in a month that includes managing regular Ophthal casualties  ⁠Going to Camps are mandatory. ⁠Includes few months of Peripheral postings . Coming to academics, few teaching programs are there but mostly self learning  Pros- Extremely non toxic work environment.  Cons- Hectic days  Day typical starts at 8 and ends at 8 on a good  day.  Can start as early as 6 and end as late at 11 on some busy days.

It's technically 1.5 yrs long but they might ask you to work at one of their peripheral centres first for 6 months - 1 year, especially if your SICS numbers are low. In that case, total duration can run up to 2- 2.5 years by the time you are done. Cornea in Madurai has the highest number of fellow intake so dept is crowded. Cataract surgery opportunities are variable between fellows, depends on your skill, speed and lack of complications. OT sisters have a big role in deciding which fellow will be called to operate. That said, corneal surgery numbers are more or less same for every fellow- they give at least 50 keratoplasties (including therapeutic & optical PKs). But you get only penetrating keratoplasties there. Generally no hands-on given for lamellar surgeries generally, except to 1 or 2 fellows based on the Chief's discretion. Ocular surface disorders like AMG, MMG done but no SLET. Clinical exposure is very good, you see almost every textbook case  Lots and lots of all kinds of corneal ulcers- you get fed up after a while. They have all the diagnostic equipments, you can learn anterior segment photography also. Surgically you get keratoplasties, C3Rs, pterygiums, conjunctival grafts, few corneal tear repairs, amniotic membrane grafting; no corneal rings. There is 1 week posting for fellows for Refractive procedures- no hands-on, only observation. In my time they did LASIK, PRK but there was no SMILE or any of the other latest refractive procedures.. don't know the state now.  They give you only SICS chances in Aravind, no Phaco training. I find this a drawback compared to Cornea programs in other places like MM Joshi or LVP that include phaco training within their fellowships. However, you can fill that lacuna with Aravind's paid short term phaco training after finishing fellowship.

Duration= 2 years Exposure to all types of retina cases at Aravind is good, we will get lots of lasers and injections including in ROP cases, surgery number is also reasonable. 2 weeks uvea and ROP + ocular oncology training included, thereafter you will be going for ROP screening in the periphery where you will again see good number of ROPs.  At the end of fellowship you will be confident with basic cases but you won't get PDR membrane cases and macular hole (ILM peeling step). There are lot of fellows at any given time, so surgery numbers may vary between fellows.  Work load is huge, but toxicity in the department is less. No single mentor, you are trained by consultant posted in OT, fellows are rotated for OT.

(Note- this Medical Retina (MR) program is different from their Medical Retina & Uvea program which is 2 yrs) 1 YEAR duration Medical Retina (MR) program 1st month training For 8 months...1 month uvea posting, 1 month emergency posting, 1 month diagnostics posting, rest 5 months MR unit posting with different consultants in which we are in OP with them. Last 3 months known as SR-ship in which one gets their mentor under which they will start getting injections in OT. MR fellows are mostly in OP with consultants, so we get ample amount of almost all variety of cases.. so clinical OP exposure is really very good. Regarding hands on, in 1 month of diagnostic posting we start getting lasers and B-scans. In last 3 months when we become SR, we get 2 or 3 days per week of full day postings in lasers and similarly 2 or 3 days per week of full day postings in B-scan room- In 1 day we get 20-25 lasers if posted in lasers and if posted in B-scan room, we get 40-50  B-scans in 1 day. Injections we get in last 3 months of SR-ship only. It's not hectic.. timings are 8-5pm. Every month you have one emergency posting it's 7 pm (one day) to 7 pm (next day). It's not toxic at all. Cataract surgery is not given in 1 yr MR fellowship, it's given in the MR + Uvea fellowship. Once or twice a month we get night emergency duty or ward duty. Sundays are usually free. Occasionally we get emergency duties.

Review- Uma Eye Clinic offers a pretty good, hands-on fellowship that’s intense but incredibly rewarding if you’re serious about learning. Over 1.5 years (initially one year, now extended), you get to perform around 150 phacos, starting with your first 20–30 cases on a 3D operating microscope, which really helps with confidence and depth perception. There’s some exposure to refractive work too, around 4-5 LASIK cases (both femtosecond and microkeratome), 1-2 SMILE surgeries, and 5-6 C3R cases. You also get to observe FLACS, corneal transplants, VR surgeries, and squint cases as and when they happen. Your day runs from 9 AM to 7 PM, and you alternate between OT and OPD, which has a steady and diverse patient load. There are outreach camps on rotation during the week and one Sunday a month, but otherwise Sundays are off. Just note: there are only 2 holidays in the whole year, so it’s definitely a grind. No night duties! The clinic is very well-equipped with machines like the Nikon Daytona, OCT, iTrace, Sirius, Lipiflow, and Lipiscan, and they even do Presbyond — so you’ll get to learn how to assess and prep those patients. Retinal lasers are also something you can get involved in depending on interest and camp volume. The OT setup is excellent, the phaco machines (Centurion and Whitestar Signature Pro) are top-tier, and overall, the environment is supportive. Everyone is approachable, though of course there’s the usual chatter and politics that come with any busy place. All in all, it’s a packed schedule with great surgical exposure, especially if you go in with clarity on what you want. If you put in the effort, you’ll come out well-trained and quite satisfied. I did around 110 phaco cases during my one-year fellowship. At the time (2024), the rules were a bit different, there wasn’t a fixed number of surgeries promised, so I’m not entirely sure what the current setup is. But based on how things worked then, I’d estimate that 150 cases over 1.5 years averaging 1-2 cases per week. The exact number you get depends a lot on how many fellows are in the program with you. In my batch, there were 3 of us, and usually 2 phaco cases were posted per day on regular OT days. Occasionally, foreign candidates would come in, not all of them come for high-volume training. Some just do 10-15 cases over a few days, so even in those weeks, you’ll likely get one case. But if someone comes for a larger volume (like 40-50 cases), then you might not get posted for a week. That said, it does balance out and picks up again soon after. You can’t expect a case every single day, but overall the hands-on numbers we got were close to what was mentioned during the interview. Another review of the same program from another past fellow who did it when it was a one year program- Hi there! So, my training was quite intense, with a lot of exposure to advanced cataract training. We started with 3D, which is super helpful for understanding depth perception. We also used CTR, pupil expansion devices, multiple phaco machines, and various phaco tips. The refractive workup included various trifocal, toric, post-LASIK workups and options for obtaining uncorrected 6/6 N6 vision. We also received hands-on training for LASIK, smile, and PRK procedures. They also give exposure to abberometry profile. The workup and post-procedure management, including complications treatment, were also covered. I liked my time there, it was a good experience for me.

1 yr duration with 3 years of bond.  No bond if sponsored by Sightsavers or any other sponsoring body.  During fellowship, Stipend 80- 85k. During bond period, 1.5 lacs salary with increments. No caution deposits. Other speciality fellows (Glaucoma & Cornea) get one cataract case per week.  Surgeries start with SICS then phacos. If you're proficient in SICS, they can start you on phaco in a week or two.  OT is 3 days weekly in first 6 months- one case each OT. Then daily OTs (cases variable depending on the fellow's ability).  Complicated cases are given during your bond period.  Daily social OPDs.  Work environment is good. Consultants are very approachable.  You do your surgeries under different consultants on the days of the week. Consultants are there to help or take over the case when required.  Will be posted in Susrut branches within Kolkata. Duty hours from 9 - 5/6 pm.  2 emergency duties per month. Camp duties.  No dedicated classes for fellows. Encouraged to attend DNB classes which are mostly after 4/5 pm. Mostly self learning.  Foreign trainees (Saudi ophthalmology residents) intake during the peak cataract season. They do about 2-3 cases/day. Sometimes take up the fellows' cases when cases are less.

Recently started (2023 thereafter). Duration= 2 yrs Applications inviting fellows are put out on LinkedIn , selection is after interview with head. No entrance or exit exam. Usually 2 fellows/ session. Stipend= 45k, increases to 55k in 2nd yr. Hands-on for retina cases are given early, sometimes in 1st month, usually in 2nd month but again, depends on your rapport with consultants and your demonstrated skill- all common retina surgeries operated here. Fellows are posted with diff units so OT days vary accordingly- 2 or 3 retina OT days per week/ unit. You are trained in ROP screening but ROP lasers usually not given. Cataract OT is on Fridays and if cases are in excess, they may call VR fellows to operate- usually given only SICS. Phacos may sometimes be given on request. Clinical exposure is good. Some Uvea and Onco exposure is also there. Work environ is not hectic, not toxic. There are night duties (2/week) and Sunday duties shared with PGs Weekly academic classes also +

I (reviewer) feel this fellowship is good. It is for 18 months.  Selection by interview. No admission fees. No bond, no caution deposits. Stipend 70k (you get 62k in hand after TDS cut). Exposure is good in terms of OPD - you see charity cases twice a week and training is under Dr Ramanjit Sihota ma'am who is a great teacher and shares lot of knowledge to handle OPD and OT as well.  OT hands is okay. You get some cataract cases and Glaucoma cases (trabs, phaco-trabs etc).  You will be posted in Shroff's South Delhi centres - Kailash colony and Connaught place according to a roster.  Regular classes once a month you have to attend, there is an exam (theory+ practical viva) you have to give in the middle and before leaving as well, but they are good and manageable.  No night duties, timings are from 8/9 to 5 pm/7pm depending on patient load.  OT once a week - so hands on is okay.  Overall, a good learning experience as well as the brand name of Shroff Hospital comes on your CV elevating your chances as an upcoming Glaucoma consultant.

Phaco and Glaucoma Ahalia offers a 12-month phaco and an 18-month glaucoma fellowship.  Both programs give you phaco training (about 50-60 cases minimum) during your last 4 months here.  If you're a glaucoma fellow, you also get around 5 trab cases in addition to the cataract cases. All fellows share the same OP workup, so you get to see cases across all specialties. There is a mandatory one year pre -fellowship duty to be done at one of Ahalia's centers first. During this time, you're an op doctor and get zero surgeries.  Salary during pre-fellowship is 80,000/ month and then 30,000/ month during fellowship (as of 2025). The main fellowship training happens in Palakkad which is a small town- but the Ahalia campus is huge and vast. Palakkad is not a very happening place but thankfully Coimbatore (cool city with great hangouts) is just 1 hour drive away.  You start with SICS for first 6-7 months and then shift to phaco but if you pick up well, you can start even earlier. You learn to operate on all kinds of cataract.   OT runs daily from 9 am till about 3 pm and usually never goes past 5.  Fellows are also taught to manage complications, do vitrectomies etc.  All cases are recorded and then reviewed later by trainers to determine areas for improvement. Academics and classes don't happen much so it's up to you to read textbooks and other relevant materials. After fellowship, there's a 1.5 year bond with a salary of 1.2 lakhs annually. Breaking the bond will cost you 10 lakhs. You can work as a consultant at any Ahalia center for your bond period, they have a branch in most districts of Kerala. Medical Retina As a fellowship program was just started only in 2025- duration is for 3 months. So after finishing your Phaco/Glaucoma fellowship, you can opt to stay an additional 3 months and do Medical Retina. D uring this time you continue to do more phacos (some fellows have even transitioned to topical phaco in this period) in addition to learning lasers and intravit injections as well.