Participants at the symposium, which attracted a wide range of healthcare professionals.
Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) recently held its Building Capacity in Healthcare Professions symposium.
The symposium was organised by the college’s Institute for Population Health with the collaboration and input from the divisions of pre-medical education and admissions. The sustainability, professional development and evolution of healthcare were discussed at the symposium.
The two-day event featured workshops that allowed the in-depth study of the topic, along with lectures by world-renowned medical and healthcare experts. The aim was to show delegates that continuous learning and improvement are the basis for capacity building but that related issues like health policy, global education, health practitioner’s wellness, counselling and self-care inform the subject and are directly related to the overall improvement of public health and healthcare.
Subjects for the workshops were varied, and included Peter Martin, the interim chair of graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, discussing the impact that design has on the development of healthcare, and WCM-Q’s Dr Ravinder Mamtani and Dr Sohaila Cheema leading a discussion about lifestyle medicines. Other workshops covered a systems approach to capacity building and lifelong learning by Dr William Bozeman from University of Central Florida, social media research and practice in health by Drs Luis Luque and Ingmar Weber from the Qatar Computing Research Institute-Qatar. From WCM-Q, Dr Alan Weber spoke about narrative medicine and Maha Elnashar and Huda Abdelrahim focused on cultural competence.
Dr Mamtani, Professor of Healthcare Policy and Research and Senior Associate Dean for Population Health and Capacity Building, said the symposium had been a great success, attracting professionals from every sector of healthcare in Qatar.
Dr Javaid Sheikh, Dean of WCM-Q, spoke about developing innovation in the training of healthcare professionals, and the megatrends like climate change, non-communicable diseases, and urbanisation, that are impacting healthcare — and the need for healthcare education to evolve to address those trends.
