Dr Rifat Latifi speaking during the writing course for trauma specialists and general surgery consultants.
DOHA: Doctors aspiring to join Hamad General Hospital’s Trauma Centre must be academically oriented and preferably have published research, according to Dr Rifat Latifi, Professor of Surgery and Director of Trauma Services at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).
Research skills are required in order to effectively contribute to HMC’s future as an academic health system that integrates research, education and clinical care.
“In order for HMC to become an academic institution, we need the doctors that we hire to be academically oriented. It is mandatory in the Trauma Centre that our doctors do research. It is basically a requirement that we have elevated ourselves to. We say if you have not done any research, or you are not participating in any, or aspiring to conduct research, then perhaps you do not have a place here,” said Dr Latifi.
Speaking on the sidelines of a three-day medical writing course for trauma specialists and general surgery consultants, Dr Latifi said that in order to be a great doctor one must know how to do research and how to publish. Medical writing involves communicating clinical and scientific data and information to a range of audiences in a wide variety of formats, including medical journals or newspaper articles. Medical writing requires combining scientific knowledge and research skills with an understanding of how to present information according to the target audience’s level of understanding.
Dr Abraham Fingerhut, a distinguished trauma surgeon and professor with over 20 years of experience teaching medical writing in various countries around the world, presented at the event. Formerly Chief of Surgery at the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal in France, Dr. Fingerhut is currently a visiting professor at the University of Athens in Greece.
“Medical writing is the backbone of our (medical) profession as far as transmission and dissemination of knowledge is concerned. There is a lot of material in the hospitals here in Doha and we, as a medical profession, have to make sure that it is possible to disseminate and share that knowledge,” said Dr Fingerhut.
The Peninsula
