College members support summer school for Palestinian medical students

Green Templeton members are supporting an Oxford Summer School for Palestinian medical students from the Arab American University of Palestine (AAUP) from Monday 24 July to Friday 4 August. Spearheaded this year by Dr Ayesha Musa (Clinical Medicine, 2020), the initiative was established in 2011 by Doll Fellow Dr Alexander Finlayson, Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan and Dr Imran Mahmud.

The course is for up to twenty medical students from the new AAUP medical school based in Jenin who have completed three years of pre-clinical studies and are about to go into the 4th year. They were selected by competitive application organised by the Dean of AAUP Professor Malik Zaben.

The course includes a busy programme of teaching and observational learning together with a series of social and cultural activities in and around Oxford.

The learning will include seminars in communication skills and medical ethics, teaching in the clinical skills lab at the John Radcliffe hospital, including at OxSTaR (Oxford Simulation, Teaching and Research), case-based learning, a talk from the Oxford Global Surgery Group, ward-based work supervised by Oxford consultants and a surgical skills course run by Doll Fellow Mr Ali Ansaripour.

The summer school is being organised by student-led organisation OxPal, and is being supported by Dr Richard Harrington and the OxPal Board of directors that also includes alumni Dr Osaid Alser (MSc Musculoskeletal Sciences, 2018), Dr Kirandeep Saini (Clinical Medicine, 2017) and Dr Rose Penfold (Clinical Medicine, 2012). It will be delivered by Oxford medical students, hospital doctors, GPs and medical school colleagues some of whom have experience teaching medical students in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Commenting on the initiative, Ayesha said,

‘We are so excited to welcome the medical students from Jenin to Oxford and hope to give them a solid foundation upon which to build their clinical careers. To be able to access the world-class facilities Oxford has to offer and taught by experts in their field will be an unbelievable learning opportunity.

‘We are incredibly grateful to all the students and doctors involved for volunteering their time to make this happen.’