Could a passage to India be the way to get more surgical experience?

Recently Peter Davies, freelance journalist has posed an interesting article ‘Could a passage to India be the way to get more surgical experience?’

It has been a fact that young doctors from countries such as India have long been coming to the West to gain experience, but is it time the tables were turned?

BMJ 2012;345:e6637 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e6637 (Published 10 October 2012) Page 1

It would really be a healthy tradition to exchange our knowledge & strengthen the international relationships.

Surgeons have long realised that practice makes perfect; the more operations they perform, the more proficient they become.

Now a cardiac surgeon in India is pushing that principle to its limits. At the hospital he founded in Bangalore, Devi Shetty and his colleagues carry out operations in unprecedented numbers.He has performed more than 15 000 operations, including India’s first neonatal heart surgery on a nine day old baby. Nicknamed the Henry Ford of heart surgery, Shetty applies mass production techniques to healthcare—standardising procedures and exploiting economies of scale and offering  the world’s cheapest comprehensive health insurance at 15 pence (€0.19; $0.24) a month.

Indian is an emerging healthcare hub. 1. Over 60,000 cardiac surgeries done per year with outcomes at par with international standards.

2. Multi organ transplants like Renal, Liver, Heart, Bone Marrow Transplants, are successfully performed at one tenth the cost. 

3. Patients from over 55 countries treated at Indian Hospitals.

4. INDIA HAS THE OPPOURTUNITY TO PROVIDE THE BEST OF THE WEST & EASTERN HEALTCARE SYSTEMS

5. Indian Systems of Medicine “Staging a Comeback”

6. Ayurveda recognized as an official healthcare system in Hungary.

7. Doctors in the west are increasingly prescribing Indian Systems of Medicine 

8. More than 70% of the American population prefer a natural approach to health  

9. Americans are said to spend around $25bn on non-traditional medical therapies and products.