CLINICAL OBSERVERSHIP FOR DOCTORS
One observer per consultant, and never two in the same room. A named mentor, protected teaching every day, a logbook with targets, a supervised case report and an assessed certificate at the end.
Diabetes and obesity medicine, paediatrics, pulmonology and sleep, or psychiatry, at Vijay Nagar Colony, Hyderabad.
Doctors write to us most weeks asking to sit in. For years the answer was a casual yes: come tomorrow, stand at the back, leave when you like. Everybody was polite and almost nobody learned very much, because nothing had been planned and nobody was accountable for the visitor's time.
So we stopped doing it that way. This is a programme with a small number of seats, a named mentor per observer, a curriculum, a logbook, an assessment and a fee. The fee is what makes the teaching time defensible. A consultant who has to give you thirty protected minutes at the end of a ten hour day will only keep doing that if it is a commitment on both sides.
What you are buying is attention, not access. Access to a clinic is worth very little on its own. A month of standing in a corner watching a doctor you cannot interrupt teaches almost nothing. What is scarce is a senior clinician who has agreed, in advance, to explain why he did what he did, to look at your write ups, and to tell you honestly where you are weak.
An honest description matters more than a brochure, because the wrong applicant wastes their own money.
What this building does not have, and what you will therefore not see here:
If what you need is critical care or procedural exposure, apply to a tertiary hospital instead. We would rather say that now than take your money.
Five seats in the whole clinic in any month, and that is a limit of space rather than of demand. A consulting room here holds a doctor, a patient, an attendant and one observer. It does not hold two.
| Seat | Days and hours | Observers |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. Khizer, morning clinic | Monday to Thursday, 9 am–1 pm | 1 |
| Dr. Khizer, evening clinic | Monday to Saturday, 3–9 pm | 1 |
| Dr. Amreen | Monday to Saturday, 3–9 pm | 1 |
| Dr. Sameer | Monday to Saturday, 8–10 pm | 1 |
| Dr. Abdullah | Monday to Thursday and Saturday, 5.30–8.30 pm | 1 |
Days when your mentor is not here. Doctors travel. Dr. Khizer in particular has teaching, conference and academic commitments and is not always in Hyderabad, and no doctor here can promise to be in the building on a named day. If your mentor is away, you sit in another consultant's clinic that day, or the day is added to the end of your programme, whichever suits you. Nothing is refunded for a day that is made up.
If the absence is a continuing medical education meeting in Hyderabad, you are welcome to come along instead, at no extra cost. Several of them are worth more than the clinic day you would have had.
You apply to one of four doctors, and that doctor owns your programme. You will spend time with the others as well, and everybody eats lunch in the same room, but one person is answerable for your teaching.
Diabetologist and Bariatric Physician. The largest of the four tracks and the reason most people write to us.
You will see new type 2 diabetes from the first consultation onwards, insulin started and titrated, the newer weight and glucose medicines chosen and paid for in the real world, glucose sensor reports read in front of the patient, obesity assessed properly rather than by a number on a scale, thin outside and fat inside body types that the scale misses, fatty liver, and the conversation where a patient is told their weight is the disease.
Paediatrician, trained at Niloufer Hospital, Hyderabad.
General paediatric outpatients at volume, the common childhood illnesses of an Indian city, growth and nutrition, immunisation counselling and the parents who are hesitant about it, the sick child who needs to be moved and the far larger number who need a parent reassured properly.
Pulmonologist.
Chronic obstructive lung disease and asthma as they actually present in India, tuberculosis, spirometry performed and interpreted, home sleep studies read, continuous positive airway pressure started, and the large overlap between obesity, sleep apnoea and diabetes that this clinic is unusually well placed to teach.
Psychiatrist.
Depression and anxiety in people with long term physical illness, diabetes distress, eating behaviour and the psychology of weight, sleep, the psychiatry that presents first to a physician, and psychometric assessment. A track worth taking even if you never intend to practise psychiatry, because you will spend your career missing this in medical patients.
The integrated track. If you would rather not choose, ask for the integrated programme. It uses one of Dr. Khizer's two seats, and your week is built to move you through the other clinics, the ward round, day care and the laboratory on the sessions where that consultant has no observer of their own. Your mentor fixes that timetable in your first week. Most applicants who come for a month or longer take this.
The shape is deliberately repetitive, because repetition is how a pattern becomes recognisable.
You sit in. You are introduced to every patient by name and by what you are. You keep your own note of the cases you want to come back to.
Inpatients seen with the treating consultant, then whoever is in for iron, transfusion or an infusion that day.
At the end of the session, with your mentor, on the cases you flagged. This is the part you are paying for and it is the part that does not get cancelled.
Insulin pens and injection technique, applying and reading a glucose sensor, body composition analysis, spirometry, electrocardiogram reading, a liver stiffness scan on camp days, and building a diet plan with the dietician. All taught on demonstration equipment, on volunteers among the staff, or on yourself.
Ten minutes, to your mentor and whoever else is free. You present, you get argued with, you take it away and improve it.
Against the targets you were given on day one, so that a gap is found in week one rather than on the last afternoon.
| Included | What it means |
|---|---|
| A named mentor | One consultant responsible for your programme, not a rota of whoever is free. One observer per consultant, five seats in the whole month. |
| Protected teaching every clinic day | Thirty minutes at the end of the session, on your cases. It is in the mentor's diary, not in the gaps. |
| A structured logbook | Case targets by track, reviewed weekly and signed at the end. A one month observer in Dr. Khizer's evening clinic is expected to log about 150 outpatient consultations, 20 weight management assessments, 10 insulin starts, 10 sensor reports, 10 ward reviews and 5 body composition reports, and the morning seat is set about two thirds of that because it is a four day week. |
| Skills sessions | Twice a week, on equipment and on volunteers, never on a patient. |
| A supervised case report or audit | On every programme of a month or longer. You pick the case in your first week, you write it, your mentor supervises it properly, and it is submitted to a journal with you as first author. Acceptance is never guaranteed by anybody honest; supervision, authorship and submission are. |
| Any teaching that falls in your dates | Continuing medical education evenings, and any module of our obesity certificate course that runs while you are here, at no extra cost. |
| An assessed certificate | Hours attended, cases logged, skills covered, and your mentor's written assessment. Plus a signed letter of experience on request. |
| Three months of access afterwards | Email or message your mentor about your own cases for three months after you leave, and a place in the alumni group. |
| A quarter off the obesity certificate course | Twenty five per cent off the next batch of the certificate course, for a year after you finish. |
An observer observes. In India you may not take part in the care of a patient unless you are registered to do so and employed to do it here, and neither applies to you.
An observer who breaks the confidentiality rule is asked to leave the same day and the fee is not refunded. That has never happened and this line is here so it does not.
Applying is free. You pay only after you are offered a place, on a link sent to you, and the seat is held for seven days while you decide.
Half fee for the first year. Every application that reaches us on or before 31 December 2026 is charged half, whichever programme you take and wherever you qualified.
What counts is the date your application arrives, not the date you come. Apply in December and start in March, and you still pay the launch fee. It is written into your offer letter, so there is nothing to claim and no code to type.
| Programme | Length | Usual fee | Apply by 31 Dec 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clinic Day a single full day, to see whether this is for you | 1 day | ₹500 | ₹250 |
| Core one track, one mentor, includes the supervised case report | 1 month | ₹5,000 | ₹2,500 |
| Extended case report and an audit, and a teaching slot of your own | 2 months | ₹10,000 | ₹5,000 |
| Immersion all four tracks, a second project, and a clinic list of your own to follow up | 3 months | ₹15,000 | ₹7,500 |
Why it is this cheap, since you will wonder. The fee does not cover what this costs to run. A consultant's protected half hour at the end of a ten hour day is worth a great deal more than ₹5,000 a month, and everybody here knows it.
It is a commitment rather than a price. What it buys is a doctor who actually turns up, because somebody who has paid nothing does not come on the fourth Tuesday. What we want in return is your attention. If the fee is still the thing standing between you and a month here, write and say so.
Until 31 December 2026 it is half of even that, because the first doctors through a new programme are the ones who make it better.
Final year students and interns pay the same and are welcome on the Clinic Day and the one month programme. The two and three month programmes are open only to doctors who already hold a degree and a council registration.
| Programme | Length | Usual fee | Apply by 31 Dec 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clinic Day | 1 day | US$49 | US$25 |
| Core | 1 month | US$249 | US$125 |
| Extended | 2 months | US$449 | US$225 |
| Immersion | 3 months | US$649 | US$325 |
Compare that with what a month of observing costs in Europe or North America before you have paid for anything else. It includes the invitation letter and any form your own university or regulator needs completed, which is the part that quietly takes the time. Everything else we do for a visiting doctor is set out in coming from outside India.
Travel, visa, food, accommodation and local transport are yours. We will send a list of serviced apartments and hotels within walking distance, and the staff will happily tell you where to eat, but we do not book anything and we take no commission from anybody who does.
The Clinic Day fee is adjusted in full against a longer programme if you join one within sixty days.
A month in an Indian clinic is a long way from home, and most of what goes wrong for a visiting doctor has nothing to do with medicine. This is what we do, and what stays yours.
India has no observership visa. Which category fits your case is a question for the Indian mission in your country, and we do not advise on it, because a wrong answer from us costs you a flight. What we do is send the invitation letter early, keep its wording consistent, and be reachable if the consulate calls to check that we exist. Apply at least eight weeks ahead. Our longest programme is three months, which keeps you clear of the rules that apply to longer stays.
Please do not arrive on a visa that does not permit what you have come to do. We will ask to see it on your first morning, and we would rather lose the fee than have you in the building on the wrong papers.
Most consultations here run in Urdu, Hindi or Telugu. Left alone, a visiting doctor spends a month reading faces. So the arrangement is explicit: your mentor gives you the case in two lines of English as it happens, your daily thirty minutes of teaching is entirely in English, and every written thing you are given is in English. If you want to pick up the clinical phrases, the staff will teach you, and patients enjoy it more than you would expect.
The evening clinic finishes at nine and the chest clinic at ten. Reception arranges your ride home every night you are here, at our cost, and we will point you to accommodation with a staffed reception rather than the cheapest room on a booking site. Say so when you apply and it is arranged before you land rather than on your first evening.
Nothing extra. The fee is the same as for a doctor qualified here, the letters and the forms are included, and the airport cab and your accommodation are billed to you at what they cost, by the people providing them, with nothing added by us.
Said plainly, so that nobody arrives disappointed.
It takes about four minutes and it costs nothing. You will get a reference number on screen straight away. Nobody is asked for money at this stage.
Take the Clinic Day. It is a full working day with the mentor you would have, and the fee comes off a longer programme if you come back within sixty days. Below a month there is no programme, because a fortnight is not long enough for the logbook, the case report or an assessment worth signing.
No. A good half of the value here is for a general practitioner or physician who already sees diabetes every day and wants to be better at the newer drugs, at obesity, and at the conversations. Say so in your application and the teaching will be pitched there.
Only into two different seats: two different consultants, or one of you in Dr. Khizer's morning clinic and the other in his evening clinic. There is never more than one observer in a room. Tell us in both applications that you are a pair.
Yes, signed, with dates and hours, and we will complete a form of theirs if they have one. Send it early rather than on your last day.
The clinic runs around the clock, but consultant outpatients do not run on Sundays, so programmes are counted in working days and your dates are set accordingly. The morning seat is Monday to Thursday and the evening seat is Monday to Saturday.
Write to Dr. Khizer directly at oratorkhizer@gmail.com. He reads these himself, because reception looks after patients and will not know the answer to a question about the programme.
It is more useful to tell him what you are trying to be able to do than to ask whether we run this. If you are writing from outside India, say so in the first line and put your dates in the subject.
