Latest news with #medicaleducation
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Stephen Miller's legal group asks DoJ to look into ‘illegal DEI practices' at Johns Hopkins
A legal group founded by Trump adviser and white nationalist Stephen Miller has requested the justice department investigate 'illegal DEI practices' at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In a letter to the justice department's civil rights division, America First Legal asked assistant attorney general Harmeet K Dhillon to investigate and issue enforcement actions against the prestigious medical university for embracing 'a discriminatory DEI regime as a core institutional mandate'. The legal complaint accuses Johns Hopkins of 'systematically infusing race and other identity-based preferences into medical school admissions, scholarships, faculty hiring, academic curricula, residency programs, and governance. 'Johns Hopkins is not training the next generation of physicians,' the complaint reads. 'It is indoctrinating them.' America First Legal specifically criticized the university's financial aid program, which began offering full scholarships to all students from families earning less than $300,000 after a $1bn donation from alum Michael Bloomberg in 2024 The complaint alleges: 'Johns Hopkins is Using 'Socioeconomic Status' as a Proxy for Race-Based Admissions' to circumvent the supreme court's ruling ending affirmative action. 'Johns Hopkins has constructed a facade of legality around a deeply illegal system. They have replaced explicit race-based admissions with upstream sorting, downstream subsidies, and bureaucratic double-speak designed to preserve racial preferences,' America First Legal attorney Megan Redshaw said in a statement announcing the complaint. 'This is not only unlawful under the Constitution and federal civil rights statutes – it has no place in medicine where competence must come first.' Founded by Miller in 2020, America First Legal focused on advancing a legal agenda for a second Trump administration. As a White House adviser under the first Trump administration, Miller led work on the Muslim travel ban and family separation policy. After Trump lost the 2020 election, Miller launched America First Legal to continue pursuing the administration's agendas. It succeeded in winning a 2021 lawsuit blocking implementation of a $29bn Covid-era Small Business Administration program for restaurants owned by women, veterans and people from socially and economically disadvantaged groups; another against CBS and Paramount alleging discrimination against a white, straight man who wrote for the show Seal Team; and a case this year allowing Maryland parents to have their children opt out of lessons using LGBTQ books. America First Legal addressed its complaint regarding Johns Hopkins directly to Dhillon, head of the justice department's civil rights division and a conservative attorney known for her lawsuits opposing Covid-19 restrictions and gender-affirming care for minors. The letter accuses Johns Hopkins of evading the supreme court's affirmative action ruling by focusing on pathway programs. The letter alleges: 'The use of DEI-based discrimination in medical education isn't just illegal, it's especially indefensible. No sector demands greater adherence to merit and objectivity than medicine, where decisions made by physicians can mean the difference between life and death.' Emerging research shows that diversifying the medical workforce may end racial disparities in healthcare: one 2023 study in the Journal of American Medicine found that Black people in counties with more Black primary care physicians live longer, and guidance from the American Medical Association explains why Native American patients may not trust white doctors. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Only about 5% of US doctors are Black, even though Black Americans make up 14% of the US population. Medical school applications from Black and Hispanic students fell sharply after the supreme court's affirmative action ruling. In 2020, Johns Hopkins University announced that its founder owned slaves during the 19th century. At the time, university officials wrote they decided to share the development as part of the school's effort 'to deepen our historical understanding of the legacy of racism in our country, our city, and our institutions'. America First Legal's complaint asks the justice department and the Department of Health and Human Services to require Johns Hopkins end all offices, residencies, outreach initiatives, scholarships, admissions pipelines and other programs that focus on race. It also calls for the federal government to suspend funding streams 'currently supporting discriminatory practices' and conduct an audit on all funding awarded to the university since 2021. A major recipient of federal research dollars, Johns Hopkins announced in March that it would cut more than 2,000 jobs after the Trump administration slashed $800m in grants to the administration through the now dismantled US Agency for International Development. The institution is also currently under investigation alongside nine other elite universities set to be visited by the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
The World's Richest Woman Has Opened a Medical School
Aerial overview of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine Credit - Timothy Hursley—Courtesy of Alice L. Walton School of Medicine On July 14, 48 students walked through the doors of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark. to become its inaugural class. Some came from neighboring cities, others from urban centers in Michigan and New York. Almost all had a choice in where they could become doctors but took a chance on the new school because of its unique approach to rethinking medical education. Named after its founder—the world's richest woman and an heir to the Walmart fortune—the school will train students over the next four years in a radically different way from the method most traditional medical schools use. And that's the point. Instead of drilling young physicians to chase symptom after symptom and perform test after test, Alice Walton wants her school's graduates to keep patients healthy by practicing something that most doctors today don't prioritize: preventive medicine and whole-health principles, which involve caring for (and not just treating) the entire person and all of the factors—from their mental health to their living conditions and lifestyle choices—that contribute to wellbeing. Those aren't new ideas, of course, but traditional medicine has only paid lip service to them. Experts have noted that while as much as 80% of medical education focuses on biology, about 60% of premature deaths are due to behavioral factors including lifestyle habits like diet, exercise, and smoking. 'I applied to 34 schools, and nowhere else are they doing this,' says Ellie Andrew-Vaughn, who arrived in Bentonville from Ann Arbor, Mich. 'I heard whispers about the school back in December 2021,' says Rebecca Wilson, who grew up in nearby Cave Springs and plans to remain in Arkansas to improve the health care there. 'Hearing how revolutionary their outlook on medicine was, and how it was a part of the DNA and not something adapted to the curriculum like some of the other schools—that was unique.' Read More: The Race to Explain Why More Young Adults Are Getting Cancer Visually, the school lives up to its acronym: AWSOM. The building, with soaring glass walls, is located on Walton family property and includes not just a wellness studio and gym, but a rooftop park, healing gardens where students can study, growing gardens for producing healthy foods, and a reflection pond. A path from the rooftop park leads through the Ozark forest directly to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which Walton built in 2011, as a reminder to the students about the link between healing, art, science, and humanity. Walton is covering tuition for the first five graduating classes. For her investment, Walton anticipates that some of the newly minted doctors will bring what they learn to the local community—specifically to underserved areas in Arkansas, Walton's home state. But her grander vision is for the model she creates to be mirrored at other medical schools across the country—so that what started in northwest Arkansas can spread to other regions with few health resources. Creating a new medical school in 2025 isn't an easy or obvious project, especially when the mission is to redesign medical education. 'My brother Jim said, 'Oh, that's a big undertaking, Alice.' I think my big brother was trying to protect me from myself,' she says with a smile. But Walton's firsthand experience as a patient set her on this path. After a serious car accident in the 1980s, she battled a bone infection, multiple surgeries, and lingering health issues for more than a decade. Walton grew convinced that 'our health care system is broken' and that someone needed to catalyze change. A broken system Medicine in the U.S. has long incentivized doctors to respond to people's symptoms—by ordering many rounds of tests and procedures, to name two cost-driving examples—rather than trying to prevent them in the first place. The doctor-patient conversations that should be at the heart of effective medical care are rare today, and patients are saddled with exorbitant fees that haven't always contributed to better health outcomes. The system also contributes to care deserts in rural America. Arkansas, in particular, ranks 48th out of the 50 states in the share of adults in fair or poor health. The state also has the highest maternal death and teen birth rates in the U.S. Where do you start if you want to recreate health care from scratch? There isn't a single solution, and any strategy needs to account for not just how doctors are trained and practice medicine, but also the financial incentives that currently drive those practices. In 2019, Walton founded the Heartland Whole Health Institute, located steps from the new medical school, which focuses on research, health advocacy, and education about the policies and financial systems necessary to advance preventive care. With AWSOM, she is turning her attention to finding a better way to train the people who will populate that system: future doctors. 'They will get all the science and disease knowledge they need to manage the 'sick-care' side of things,' Walton says. But 'I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy.' That includes integrating emerging technologies like AI and digital health innovations that can help people track and manage health conditions like diabetes, obesity, and blood pressure. 'We are in a huge transition point right now in terms of technology,' she says. 'I'm really excited about the potential.' An art-infused curriculum Her vision for an innovative curriculum at the medical school began taking shape after a meeting with Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine and a fellow Arkansan, who became AWSOM's chair of the board of directors. (AWSOM also has a formal collaboration with Stanford, in which half a dozen of the university's faculty will teach incoming students and mentor both students and faculty.) To helm the school, Walton chose Dr. Sharmila Makhija, a gynecologic cancer surgeon from Alabama who shared Walton's commitment to whole-health principles and improving the quality of health care in the South. 'The foundation [of the curriculum] is traditional medicine but enhanced with the humanities and the arts to improve the delivery of care—so we improve on how we [act] with patients and how we partner with patients,' says Makhija. Read More: The Surprising Reason Rural Hospitals Are Closing Walton's personal passion for art informed and infused the new school's humanities-based approach. Introduced to watercolors by her mother, she made her first art purchase—a print of Picasso's Blue Nude—as a child from her father's Walton's 5 & 10 in Bentonville. As an adult, she collected key pieces of American art spanning five centuries, then founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville to share what is now a collection of more than 3,500 pieces with the community, for free. 'Art was a foreign thing here,' she says. 'Museums weren't a part of our life.' But when the museum opened in 2011, it resonated, becoming a center for social events. Crystal Bridges and AWSOM are physically attached for a reason. An integral part of the medical school curriculum involves exposure to and appreciation for the lessons that healers can learn from art. 'In the time I was going in and out of hospitals, I had to grab whatever I could find to keep my sanity,' Walton says of how painting watercolors and reading art books helped in her recovery. 'I do believe the art world and the health care world need to collide more, and both will benefit from it.' All students will take a course, for example, that involves drawing one another and studying pieces in the museum. The hope is to sharpen their skills of observation and empathy. 'It sounds basic, but you start to talk about, 'What did it feel like to observe someone closely, or how did it feel to be seen?'' says Makhija. 'It's not a usual way in the medical world to think and talk, so it's a different language, but that's part of the goal: to help them understand different modes of speaking, understanding, and relating to others.' On a wintry January day, Walton walks through the museum's installation and stops at one of her favorites: a gigantic depiction of the opening words of the U.S. Constitution, 'We the People.' The original calligraphy is recreated with thousands of shoelaces in different colors and fabrics. On the opposite wall, Walton chose to place an array of portraits of 'who we are as people,' she says, ranging from one of George Washington painted by Charles Willson Peale in the early 1780s to a digital installation featuring a fracking worker from North Dakota—'two of my boyfriends George and Johnny,' as Walton describes them. The series also includes the first known portrait of an American, painted in Colonial times, and a portrait of a Black woman painted after the Ferguson riots. 'We don't only go by time periods,' she says of the way the pieces in the museum are displayed. 'Some of the fun is putting George and Johnny together.' The installation spans pieces from all time periods, all races, and all walks of life—a theme she infuses in the medical school as well. 'Health care is the most inequitable,' she says. 'A lot of that is because we don't have doctors and health-care providers who look like a lot of people. It is a big issue, and it is a huge piece of the problem in why people don't get health care.' Read More: How Health Insurance Monopolies Affect Your Care Walton believes that every piece should be displayed and enjoyed by the public, not tucked away in storage. So in 2017, she created the Art Bridges program, a collaboration with more than 250 smaller museums around the country that essentially extends the available wall space for pieces by rotating works constantly. That same focus on putting the community first infuses the training that the new medical students receive so that they never lose sight of why they became physicians: to serve the patients that need them the most. To reiterate their broader role in society as healers, all of the new students started community service work on their third day on campus. 'We expect the students, the faculty, everybody to be of service to the community,' says Makhija. 'Wherever they go to work, they've got to understand who they are serving.' Doctors of the future About 2,000 students applied to the school's 48 spots, and many who were chosen share an interest in bringing health care to underserved regions, particularly Arkansas. One is Emily Bunch, who grew up in Little Rock and was drawn to the school's focus on nutrition education, which traditional medical schools tend to gloss over. While the medical school accreditation organization recommends that curriculums devote at least 25 hours of instruction to nutrition, most schools average about 20 hours, in some cases only as electives. AWSOM's curriculum currently includes more than 50 hours of nutrition-related training, including culinary classes. Doctors-to-be will spend class time gardening and at a teaching farm, learning about the seasonality of fresh foods and how to cook them—then passing those lessons onto patients. 'There is a lack of understanding of nutrition and so much exposure to fast food,' Bunch says of her own struggles with weight and finding healthy food options growing up. 'It wasn't until a doctor talked to me about nutrition in a whole-health way that I understood the mental and psychological aspects of weight, and that empowered me to finally take control of my health.' 'It's a big problem in Arkansas and a big part of the reason I wanted to become a doctor—to serve as a guide for other people,' Bunch says. 'Arkansas desperately needs more whole-health and preventive care.' Read More: 10 Questions You Should Always Ask at Doctors' Appointments As part of their training, students will also have the opportunity to design parts of their curriculum through research projects and community service. The hope is that these will lead to novel ways of delivering care and improving health outcomes, especially for communities that current health care services don't reach. Safwan Sarker, from Brooklyn, is eager to find ways to improve home-based care by integrating high-tech tools like virtual reality and augmented reality for underserved populations. 'There aren't enough people researching these [strategies],' he says. 'So people dismiss them. But AWSOM is encouraging us to look at new systems and new ways to help populations like those in rural communities. If they aren't getting their medications on time, would a drone-based system work? Once we get the evidence-based framework for these novel methods, they could lead the way in terms of bridging gaps.' Both Walton and Makhija know their graduates will face challenges in bringing what they learn in the classroom to the real world. 'We can have whatever curriculum we want, but if they are thrown out in an environment where they are not practicing whole health, then it's for naught,' says Walton. The new graduates must be part of the solution to change that, she believes. AWSOM partnered with the local health system, Mercy, which will not only provide clinical exposure to the doctors-in-training but also implement some of the whole-patient approaches the school is hoping to introduce, including initially with a cardiac care center. There are signs this approach has appeal beyond the heartland. Already, Makhija says a few health systems have contacted her about AWSOM's whole-health focus, and Walton hopes the school will serve as a model of a new type of medical education. 'It's all about rethinking and re-envisioning what the education of the next generation of health care workers will be like,' says Makhija. 'Alice and I are very keen on creating a sustainable model of education, both in how we deliver the curriculum that can be replicated, as well as fiscally, so that other schools can use a similar model.' If successful, AWSOM could prove that medical school should, and can, be about more than just biology and anatomy. It can also be about what drives a person, and what feeds them—literally, figuratively, spiritually. Walton is delighted to watch the future of health care take root in the places where she played as a child, especially since the area desperately needs better health solutions. 'It's going to be really exciting and fun to see what happens,' she says. Contact us at letters@ Solve the daily Crossword
CNA
3 days ago
- Health
- CNA
Associate Professor Faith Chia on enhanced medical school curriculum
Dissection of actual human bodies will soon be mandatory for medical students at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. It believes the hands-on experience will make a vital difference to their knowledge of anatomy. Associate Professor Faith Chia, Vice-Dean of Education at NTU Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, discusses how the enhanced curriculum that makes cadaveric dissection mandatory could improve anatomy training for students. She also shares why the institution is implementing this, on top of using virtual tools in medical education, even as other countries move away from the dissection of human bodies.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Doctors Are Sharing The One Thing They Wish Everyone Knew About Their Body, And People Are Shocked At How Uneducated They Are About Themselves
It's pretty commonly known that education about the human body isn't as in-depth as it should be in traditional schooling. So Reddit user u/assassinmice was compelled to create this thread asking doctors what they wish everyone knew about their body. Here are some of the top-voted answers: 1."Ejaculating blood happens to most people at least once in their lives. In 99% of cases, it resolves within a week without taking any action. Peeing blood (for both sexes) is a serious medical emergency, and you should immediately go to the ER. People think it's the other way around." —u/StardustDoc "In males, there is a vestigial remnant of the uterus located in the prostate. It's called the prostatic utricle. It is a duct that leads nowhere. It sometimes has some remote endometrium in it and can produce one drop of blood every 28 days." —u/Sillyakua 2."Administering CPR compressions ASAP is one of the greatest indicators of successful outcomes." —u/hodl_this "In an emergency situation where you are giving first aid/CPR to someone, instead of stating general instructions to the group of inevitable onlookers like 'someone call 911' and 'someone get a defibrillator,' point to someone and say, 'You call 911' and 'You find a defibrillator.' This prevents the bystander syndrome, where people think someone else will do it. It gives clear instructions, allowing for a more efficient process where literally seconds could mean life or death." —u/Cm0002 Related: 3."Your kidneys and liver cheerfully do all the toxin elimination you'll ever need. Cleanses and other 'detoxifying' products are bullshit and a waste of money." —u/taRxheel "Unless you have liver or kidney failure, your body detoxes itself really well. Don't get scammed by these detox teas and whatever!" —Anonymous 4."So many people don't know where the orifice each gender urinates through really is. Urine exits the body of people with vaginas through the urethra, a small tube located in the vulva, between the clitoris and the vaginal opening. In people with penises, the urethra passes through the prostate gland and the penis, and opens at the tip of the penis. —u/SuspiciousLemur 5."Please do not use soap or douching products inside your vagina. It has a delicate pH balance, and this is how you get yeast infections. Wash your labia, but do not clean internally. The vagina is self-cleaning just like your eyeballs. Do you wash your eyeballs? No. Do you wash your face? Yes." —u/H0use0fpwncakes 6."You often will feel normal with high blood pressure. It's often found incidentally. So, don't wait until it gives you symptoms you don't want to go through. To figure out if you're asymptomatic, get checked at least once a year if you're over 35 years old." —u/doctor_d9 "High blood pressure doesn't have symptoms a majority of the time. It's called the silent killer and causes a plethora of other illnesses." —u/halfbaked05 7."Mental health IS AS IMPORTANT AS PHYSICAL HEALTH. A mental illness can kill you, just like a physical illness. And no, you can't 'snap out of it.' News flash, parents: This includes gender dysphoria. For fuck's sake, if your kids are trans, let them be themselves." —u/uniqueUsername_1024 8."The immune system is an incredibly complex and nuanced organization of cells that communicates readily to destroy anything deemed hostile within the body. It helps explain why vaccines are supposed to work, why allergies come and go, and why transfusions/transplants are hard to successfully pull off." "Here is a brief explanation of how allergies work, using pollen (allergic rhinitis) as an example: Your immune system senses pollen in the body. It doesn't appear to be one of your cells, so the B-cell collects samples of it, relays it to a Helper T-cell, which in turn helps specialize the B-cell to become one of two cells: effector and memory cells. Effectors mass produce antibodies, while memory cells are reserved for future invasions (this is why initial exposure to a new substance may not necessarily trigger allergic responses. The signal is still weak as the immune system is still acclimating to a foreign particle). Antibodies flood the pollen particles and signal for basophils/mast cells to release histamine, the hormone responsible for inflammatory responses. This is where the runny noses and sneezing come into play (and for more severe allergies, anaphylatic shock). Allergies may fade out over time for several reasons. When exposed to a non-threatening level of an allergy for a long enough time, the body decides that it's not really a threat anymore. Furthermore, as people age, the immune system weakens, making it harder to detect and overreact to allergies." —u/Dasians Related: 9."I'm a dentist. If you don't take care of your gums, your teeth will fall out of your head, and you'll get pissed at me when your jawbone atrophies and your denture doesn't fit anymore. Essentially, periodontitis causes inflammation and recession of the gums, which in turn causes inflammation and recession of the bone. After that, teeth start getting mobile and falling out." —u/TofuDeliveryBoy 10."How to self-check for skin cancer: If you see any moles that are asymmetrical, have a border (odd, like they're jagged), are different colors, grow in diameter, or evolve, go get them checked out. It might be skin cancer." —u/evgueni72 Here is a full self-check exam recommended by The American Cancer Society. 11."GET SLEEP! Psychosis can happen if someone hasn't slept or hasn't had good sleep for extended periods of time. AND DON'T JUST RANDOMLY STOP YOUR MEDICATION BECAUSE YOU FEEL BETTER. You feel better because you have a consistent amount of whatever is leveled in your body now. And now that your body is hitting equilibrium, everything is going great, so KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING. I've seen people go on and off their medications for years, and it really starts to mess up your body if you do that for too long." 12."The frequency of bowel movements can range from every three days to three times per day and be considered normal. Having three soft stools per day does not mean you have chronic diarrhea." —u/HarbingerKing Related: 13."Type 2 diabetes is more serious than most people realize. I work as a doctor in hemodialysis, and most of them are due to diabetic nephropathy. It also affects your eyes, nerves, immune system, etc. Simple life changes can help you." —u/kingofneverland 14."The colon is, in general, air-tight. Therefore, your dildo ALWAYS needs a flared base. Once it gets up past the point that I can grab it out, it's vacuum sealed in." —u/dryyyyyycracker 15."I'm a vet. Amputated limbs do not grow back. I've had far too many people asking how long it will take for their pet's amputated limb to grow back, so I'm assuming a few doctors out there will have had patients asking the same of their own missing limbs." —u/rubypiplily Salamanders, lizards, and certain fish (like Starfish) are the only living creatures that can regenerate their limbs. 16."Earwax is normal. You shouldn't try to remove it. People cause all sorts of problems with Q-tips and (god forbid) ear candles. They don't work and can cause you harm. If you genuinely need wax removed, go to a professional." —u/rhino_surgeon 17."Many simpler diseases in the body can be compared to a car. When you don't get regular checkups and take regular care, it's not like you'll notice something bad happening right away. Just like how you won't notice a missed oil change a couple of thousand miles later. But diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, alcohol dependence, etc., sneak up on you. Just like how eventually, that engine won't run as smoothly." —u/z3roTO60 18."Period blood doesn't come from the egg itself, but from the shedding of the uterus lining. I have talked to way too many people who believe that the blood comes from the egg itself, and I just think it goes to show how much the sex ed program needs to be modified." —u/octopoduss Related: 19."Injuries accumulate. I cannot stress this enough. Little kids have no business lifting heavy weights or getting pushed so hard in sports by some of these 'coaches' who seem to have little knowledge of physiology or don't care about the long-term impact of the regimens. Stuff like this really changes people's lives." —u/VladJongUn 20."You can't EVER get teeth enamel back." —u/shittyTaco 21."That there is a wide range of 'normal'. Don't be embarrassed by your body. Having said that, if you are concerned about anything, ask your doctor. We have generally heard it all before, and trust me, we have (nearly always) seen it all before. Maybe you have something that has been bothering you for ages, but you were too scared or embarrassed to ask about ask! It might be 'nothing' and you have been stressing about it for no reason. If not, then you are at least one step closer to getting it fixed. No one can help if they don't know. There are no dumb questions. YOU know your body best. So speak up! Don't wait for the doctor to 'ask the right question.'" —u/frangipani_c 22."Smoking is one of the absolute worst things you can do for your body. It is a risk factor for almost every preventable disease, including heart disease and heart attacks, strokes, almost every type of cancer, diabetes, COPD, kidney disease, macular degeneration (blindness), and so much more. I know quitting smoking is hard, but please give it a try, for your body's sake!" —u/ocean_wavez 23."Your body needs water. DRINK IT." —Anonymous You can read about how much water you need per day here. lastly: "You only have ONE body and your behavior now (drinking, smoking, not taking medicines, etc.) will impact your life quality and expectancy. It sounds logical, but very few patients really realize it." —u/Clamoxyl Do you know something we missed on this list as a medical expert? If you have a lesser-known fact about the human body that you think more people should know, add it in the anonymous comments form below and your response may be featured in a follow-up post! Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds: Solve the daily Crossword
Al Bawaba
4 days ago
- Health
- Al Bawaba
High school students explore medicine at WCM-Q
Eighty-three local and international high school students aspiring to pursue careers in medicine had the opportunity to gain early exposure to the field through the Medical Minds Online Program (MMOP), a summer program organized by Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q).The week-long virtual event was part of the Summer Enrichment Programs, designed to introduce pre-college students to the field of medicine and science through engaging and interactive sessions led by WCM-Q's faculty and staff, who are experts in their by WCM-Q's Office of Student Outreach and Educational Development, the program aims to provide an overview of the opportunities and challenges in the medical field to students with a keen interest in medicine and the sciences. It targets students in Qatar's high schools and from different parts of the world who have shown academic excellence in the sciences and girls and 33 boys from 43 schools engaged in a variety of live Zoom sessions and self-paced modules, such as medical ethics, anatomy, surgery, forensic biology, and the admissions process at participating students, entering grades 10, 11, and 12, came from various schools across Qatar, while international students joined the sessions from Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and by physicians, medical educators, and WCM-Q student mentors, the program offered both academic knowledge and personal development skills, including building a professional identity in medicine and exploring career pathways. The students also learned how to work on Canvas, a learning management system used by educational program explored different specialties in medicine to give the students a chance to see which field they were passionate about. To inspire them further, the faculty shared personal stories about their medical five WCM-Q pre-medical students served as student assistants in a session titled 'Building your Professional Identity in Medicine,' where they facilitated group discussions that asked students to identify their personal values, reflect on what drew them to medicine, and link these values to their vision of medical practice. The students were Fatima Abdulla, Shaikha Al Ishaq, Nouf Alabdulmalik, Noof AlMalik, and Mohammed Ali medical and pre-medical students, Reem Al Janahi, Batoul Arabi, Fatima Al-Mohammed, Anns Mahboob, and Ola AboMoslim, also conducted a panel discussion where they tackled topics such as writing personal statements, interview techniques, and student life at the conclusion of the program, all students were awarded a certificate of Saleh, director of premedical administration, student outreach, and educational development, said: 'The MMOP was a wonderful opportunity for high school students to get a glimpse of the medical field. By combining both academic content and real-life insights from professionals and our students, I believe this will help the students make informed decisions about their future and build a strong foundation for those considering careers in the healthcare sector. Offered online, the program's international reach expanded attracting students from more than ten different cities around the world, in addition to Doha, Qatar.'Student participant Faisal Alazawi of The Hamilton International School, who is heading to grade 12, said: 'The program was an eye-opener, and I have learned that everyone's journey into medicine is personal and unique. Hearing the doctors share their experiences, including the challenges they have encountered, motivations, and turning points, was really inspiring, which showed me that there's no single path to becoming a physician. The program being held virtually made it incredibly accessible, allowing us to learn from anywhere while still gaining insight into what WCM-Q students experience. The self-paced modules kept me productive now that we are on summer break.' Dr. Rachid Bendriss, assistant professor of education in medicine, associate dean for foundation, student outreach, and educational development programs, and professor of English as a second language, said: 'I believe that besides introducing the students to medical topics, the program helped them build essential skills like critical thinking, communication, and self-directed learning. It's incredible to see young minds grow more confident about pursuing their goals in medicine in the future.'
