42 medical students successfully concluded their education in Qatar’s first national medical college
Qatar University (QU) College of Medicine has graduated in May 2021 its first cohort of medical students who completed a six-year undergraduate medical program. This is a significant milestone for Qatar, and a big achievement for the medical faculty and students who worked hard throughout the six years.
Prof. Dr. Egon Toft, Dean of the College of Medicine at Qatar University, explained that this first group of graduate doctors is a significant achievement for the country, Qatar University and for everyone involved in the development of one of the region’s foremost medical education providers.
“We are committed to building within Qatar University an outstanding medical college, set to equip our students with the right competencies to graduate qualified physicians empowered with the knowledge, skills and personalities that will enable them to transform the future of healthcare in Qatar. Our program is rooted in the specific needs of the Qatari society and well aligned with national strategies and priorities in healthcare education. Our College is driven by passionate dedicated faculty, including many expert clinical faculty from HMC, which helps attract promising and highly competitive students.”
Forty-two of the best graduate doctors have been selected to join Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) in July 2021 to complete their postgraduate medical residency training, which is part of the educational journey of graduating doctors in order to become highly specialized and independent medical practitioners
Medical school teaches physicians a broad range of medical knowledge, basic clinical skills, and supervised experience practicing medicine in a variety of fields; however medical residency provides in-depth training within a specific branch of medicine. It is therefore essential to have a highly established clinical facility to provide accredited clinical teaching opportunities for the training period of between four and six years where Residents can specialize in a medical or surgical specialty.
Dr. Abdullatif Al-Khal, Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Director of Medical Education at HMC explained that as an accredited teaching institution, HMC has a well-established in both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and is highly suited for medical graduates from QU and Cornell to complete their residency and fellowship training.
“We are proud to welcome the inaugural graduating class to HMC. The selected students are already very familiar with our clinical sites as they have been undertaking clinical clerkship rotations in various facilities from the fourth year of medical school and will therefore help contribute to patient care early on,” said Dr. Al-Khal. “These graduates and future cohorts will become the backbone of Qatar’s healthcare delivery system, as part of a locally-developed and trained clinical workforce, equipped to deal with Qatar’s future healthcare needs.”
The process for admission to HMC’s residency programs is highly competitive, with nearly 1,300 applications being received annually for approximately 170 available seats. The QU graduates met the same rigorous enrollment criteria similar to top international applicants, which includes exceptional performance on the internationally standardized clinical knowledge exam.
“We are also delighted to have collaborated with the College of Medicine to help encourage more home-grown talents to take up medicine. While the medical graduates represent 10 different nationalities, one third are Qatari Nationals; and female students made up nearly 67% of all graduates, indicating the strong interest in medicine among female students,” added Dr. Al-Khal.
HMC is the first healthcare system in the region to achieve prestigious institutional accreditation by the ACGME International LLC (www.acgme-i.org). To date, fourteen (14) of HMC’s residency training programs and nine subspecialty fellowship programs have successfully achieved ACGME International LLC program accreditation. QU Medical College graduates were assigned to residency programs in 13 different specialties, including Anesthesiology, Community Medicine, Dermatology, Diagnostic Radiology, Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pediatrics, Plastic Surgery and Psychiatry.
HMC sponsors more than twenty (20) residency programs and more than 60 fellowship programs in different subspecialties. In addition, HMC is accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI) as an Academic Medical Center. HMC is also a member of Qatar’s Academic Health System, with a tripartite mission to advance clinical care through teaching, education, and research, and is a primary affiliate of two medical schools in Qatar, including the College of Medicine at Qatar University.
