Dubai hospitals named training centres

Qadi Saeed Al Mroushid, Director General of the Dubai Department of Health and Medical Services (Dohms), made the announcement yesterday at a Press conference attended by Dr Susan Torrey, staff physician in emergency medicine at Children's Hospital Boston and affiliate faculty for paediatric advanced life support (PALS) courses at the AHA.

"The idea behind providing our own accredited AHA training courses is to transfer knowledge and expertise to our doctors and medical staff from other parts of the world with greater experience in continuing medical education. We are proud of having worked hand in hand with the AHA to achieve this goal," Mr Mroushid said.

He also thanked Dr Abdullah Al Khayat, Chairman of the Emirates Medical Association, and Dr Shahraban Abdullah, head of the paediatrics section at Al Wasl Hospital and head of the Paediatric Society at the EMA, whose efforts over the past year bore fruit when two of Dubai's leading public hospitals were selected as AHA training centres, not just for Dubai but for the other emirates as well.

Speaking to Khaleej Times, Dr Torrey said that together with Dr Shahraban they completed the paperwork for AHA accreditation over the past year and offered many PALS and basic life support courses at both Al Wasl and Rashid Hospitals.

"We have also found a need for basic life support courses in addition to advanced life support courses and recently conducted the basic life support providers course in Dubai. Now these hospitals are accredited AHA international training centres, they can independently offer AHA courses. Accreditation was a really important step towards providing AHA courses," Dr Torrey said.

Dr Al Khayat said the EMA was proud of the Paediatric Society's achievements and its continuous medical education programmes. He added the society was the first sub-speciality group to be set up under the wing of the EMA in the 1980s and has proven its efficacy in forging links between practising paediatricians in the UAE.

Dr Shahraban said that the last course conducted by the Paediatric Society was attended by 70 medical practitioners, adding that anyone can join these courses and that fees will be affordable. Some of the AHA courses provided are 11 hours long and can be conducted in a single day, others are longer. All courses emphasise practical application of skills.

Mr Mroushid stressed that many of these courses are compulsory for physicians and now that they are available in the UAE, doctors no longer need to travel abroad to get the necessary training and certification, which he said saves a lot of money.