What Three Continents of Surgical Training Taught Me

Every surgeon is shaped by where they train. The hands learn technique, but the judgement, the philosophy, and the bedside manner are absorbed from the environments a surgeon passes through. My own training carried me across three continents, and each one left a permanent mark on how I practise today.

It began at Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, one of India's most respected institutions, where the foundation was laid. It continued through clinical attachments in the United Kingdom, where I learned how thorough, unhurried patient communication changes outcomes. And it deepened in France, at the University of Louis Pasteur, where I trained in advanced laparoscopic technique and absorbed a European philosophy built on precision and minimising harm to the patient. This is the story of how those three threads came together.

My medical education began at Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, where I earned my MBBS in 1995. Founded in 1953, KMC Manipal is one of India's oldest and most respected medical colleges, with a long tradition of rigorous academic training and high clinical standards. Those years gave me the disciplined foundation on which everything else would be built.

India also gave me something less tangible: an understanding of the sheer variety of patients and conditions a surgeon encounters here, and the resourcefulness that practising in this environment demands. That grounding has stayed with me throughout my career.

After my MBBS, I spent close to a year in the United Kingdom, completing clinical attachments at several hospitals. It was a deliberate choice, to step outside the Indian system and observe how surgical care was practised in another mature healthcare environment.

What struck me most was the emphasis on communication. UK clinical culture places enormous value on explaining things to patients thoroughly, on shared decision-making, and on the unhurried conversation that precedes any procedure. I absorbed a conviction there that has never left me: that how a surgeon talks to a patient is not a soft skill, it is central to good care.

Later in my career, I trained at the University of Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, founded in 1538 and one of Europe's oldest universities. There I earned a Diploma in Laparoscopic Surgery and a Certificate in Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgery, credentials held by very few surgeons in Hyderabad or, indeed, in India.

But the most lasting lesson from France was philosophical. European surgical culture is built on precision, on minimising trauma to the patient, and on prioritising long-term outcomes over short-term metrics. That way of thinking now informs every procedure I perform. Training abroad is not only about acquiring techniques. It is about absorbing an entire approach to the craft.

When a patient sits across from me today, they meet the sum of all of this. The rigour of India, the communication ethos of the United Kingdom, and the precision philosophy of France, integrated over more than two decades of practice. No single training environment produces a complete surgeon. The richest practices are built from many influences, woven together over a career.

For a patient, the practical benefit is simple: a surgeon who has seen how surgery is done well in multiple systems, and who has taken the best of each into his own practice.