Some students take part in a two-year, pre-med preparation program at the school, where they hone their English and academic skills so they are better prepared for the medical program, Dr. Parrish says.
The students follow a curriculum identical to that studied by students at the New York campus, Dr. Parrish notes. As part of the second-year curriculum, students learn about diseases and have a two-week block dedicated to rheumatology. Sometimes, one rheumatologist from the New York faculty teaches the two-week block, says Dr. Parrish. Other times, there are two people.
Anne Bass, MD, associate professor of clinical medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College and Rheumatology Fellowship Program Director, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, has taught twice at the Qatar campus. Although the curriculum and school set up are identical, there were some classroom differences. At the Qatar campus, the student body was 100% Muslim, with students from all around the world. Students attending the school from Qatar have their studies paid by the government but are usually expected to work in the country’s hospitals once their studies are completed, Dr. Parrish says.
A range of dress is seen on campus, from native Qatari women who fully cover their body and face to women of Persian descent who grew up in Canada and wear jeans. Otherwise, the campus has the feel of an American school, Dr. Bass says.
Qatar has fewer than 300,000 native citizens but a total population of 1.5 million, with the majority of the non-native citizens coming from Southeast Asia and doing contract work in the country, say Drs. Bass and Parrish.
Because students from the Qatar campus do their third-year rotations in the United States, Dr. Bass says it was a pleasant surprise to see some of her students on the New York hospital ward.
The Hamad Medical Corporation, the medical center that works with the Qatar campus to provide residencies, is expected to receive accreditation for its residency programs from the American Council of Graduate Medical Education International in the summers of 2012 and 2013, says rheumatologist Thurayya Arayssi, MD, associate professor of medicine and associate dean for graduate medical education at the Qatar campus.
Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Graduate Medical School
Twenty-four students graduated as part of the first class of Duke-NUS in July of this year. Originally, 26 students began with the program in August 2007. The school was born from a government initiative in 2001 to establish a graduate medical school that would help develop physician-scientists to support the Biomedical Sciences Initiative, under which three billion Singapore dollars were earmarked to be spent making the country a biotechnology hub of Asia. Government and National University of Singapore representatives visited Duke in 2002, and plans began in 2003 to establish the country’s first graduate medical school.
