London calling Gaza: The role of international collaborations in the globalisation of postgraduate burn care education

Abstract

Burn injuries represent a significant epidemiological problem, with the vast majority occurring in low- to middle-income countries. These regions also represent areas where lack of socioeconomic growth and geopolitical instability pose additional barriers not only to healthcare provision but also to the acquisition of continuing professional development. Long-distance, web-based learning programmes (‘tele-education’) have been identified as a successful and powerful means of propagating up-to-date medical education and training in poor-resource, isolated or conflict-ridden regions. This report evaluates the role of tele-education in delivering a distance-learning Master’s degree in Burn Care to a group of 11 healthcare professionals working in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), which was funded as part of a collaboration between Queen Mary University of London and IMET-Pal (International Medical Education Trust – Palestine). We present our experience in delivering the programme in a conflict-ridden part of the world, which includes the specific adaptations to tailor the programme to regional needs as well the unique challenges faced by students and faculty in enhancing the educational value of this unique initiative. The academic achievements of this group of healthcare professionals were found to be comparable to historical student cohorts from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds and the majority of students felt that participation in the programme contributed to a direct improvement to their daily burn care practices. The successful outcomes achieved by our students support the constantly emerging evidence that targeted, well-delivered, long-distance learning programmes can become powerful tools in combating inequalities in global healthcare and health education.

Medical Education in Times of War: A Mixed-Methods Needs Analysis at Ukrainian Medical Schools

“…Participants described remote teaching as a proven measure used when teaching was disrupted, but consistent with recent literature the availability of internet, appropriate equipment, or access to platforms remained challenges (32)(33)(34).…”

Oxford-Palestine (OxPal) partnership: evaluation of an online medical research fellowship aiming to build local research capacity

“…A meta-analysis of over one-thousand research articles on the topic by the U.S. Department of Education con rmed the e cacy of distance-learning (Means et al 2009). A number of organisations (including OxPal (Penfold & Ali 2014), MedicineAfrica (Bowen et al 2012) and Queen Mary University of London (Theodorakopoulou et al 2019)) have previously demonstrated this to be true in a medical education context in LMICs. An online health research course was shown to equally enhance health research capacity when compared to in-person instruction in a small RCT of Indian research scientists by Aggarwal et al (Aggarwal et al 2011).…”

Challenges of providing healthcare worker education and training in protracted conflict: a focus on non-government controlled areas in north west Syria

“…Given current insufficient numbers of educators among the healthcare workforce in north west Syria, more efforts to capitalise on available technologies which support the education of HCWs is needed. Tele-education has been used in other conflict and post-conflict settings including Iraq, Gaza [41,42], Bosnia and Herzegovina [43]; some of these have been collaborations with international universities e.g. Mayo clinic, Queen Mary University in London and have usually focused on a single topic e.g.…”

“…Though this has occurred in other conflict affected settings e.g. Gaza, Iraq, Balkans, the extent to which these organisations have responded to the needs in north west Syria and their sustained attempts to meet critical gaps and to replace previous educational institutions and accreditation bodies has been more extensive than seen in previous conflicts [41,42,48]. This may represent a shift change in the humanitarian system whereby HCW education (with regulation/ certification/ accreditation) is prioritised alongside other key sectoral needs, particularly for complex and protracted crises such as Syria.…”