CAIRO—Graduates of Egypt’s public medical schools lack basic medical skills for dealing with emergencies when they start work, due to outdated academic curricula and teaching methods, medical experts say. A number of newly graduated doctors confirmed that they face difficulty in dealing with emergencies.
“Once, I was not able to interpret the X-rays of a patient who was injured in a car accident,” said Khaled, a doctor at a public hospital in Assiut, in southern Egypt, who asked not to reveal his surname. He said he felt embarrassed and later afraid, especially when another older physician looked at the X-ray and discovered a brain hemorrhage and was able to save the patient’s life.
Khaled is one of the 7,000 students who graduate annually from Egypt’s medical schools without sufficient practical training in some basic medical skills needed to qualify them to deal with emergencies and accidents, putting the lives of patients and sometimes the physicians themselves at risk.