Belgian doctors in training will receive extra education to prepare them for war victims, according to senior staff at Ghent University.
“Of course, I hope it never comes to this, but we shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand either,” Piet Hoebeke, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Ghent University, told public news outlet VRTNWS on March 5.
Last year, NATO countries introduced an action plan urging member states to strengthen their efforts in response to the war in Ukraine. In turn, the Belgian Government called for better preparation of healthcare students for potential conflict situations.
Now, universities including Ghent have started offering an expansion of their medical curriculums to include such preparations.
Filip Lardon, Dean of Medicine and Health Sciences at Antwerp University, told VRTNWS there was no time to waste to address the issue because even starting now, the first results would not be seen until six years down the line, when new doctors graduated.
“We want to make sure students are aware of what can go wrong and how best to respond,” Hoebeke said.
To address that, he said an expert group would look to integrate more military elements into the general education of doctors, medics and nurses. This could range from extra optional courses to entire full master’s educations.
Lardon stressed: “War is a very unique situation that requires much greater expertise in areas such as trauma medicine, emergency medicine and orthopaedic surgery.”
“Of course, we already have highly skilled doctors in these fields,” he said but added: “Operating in conflict situations is of a different nature and demands additional instruction for students.”
Experts said students were likely to learn a lot from the situation in Ukraine, where new weapons and different injuries have become apparent, changing how medics needed to handle certain patients.
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