Haifa hospital head slams army's plan for medical school

An Israel Defense Forces initiative to open a separate medical school for military doctors is a "waste of funds" and will cause "irreparable damage" to the field of medicine in Israel, Prof. Rafi Beyar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa said yesterday.

Beyar, who heads Rambam, responded to news about the army's plan that first appeared in Haaretz on Wednesday by sending a scathing letter to Prof. Avi Advertisement


Israeli, the director-general of the Ministry of Health. Advertisement


In the letter, Beyar argued that the army intends to sacrifice the quality of students accepted into medical schools in order to compensate for the severe shortage in military physicians.

"The IDF is interested in setting up a school together with one of the existing medical schools in order to overcome a desperate shortage in military doctors," Beyar wrote. "By doing so they will be able to lower the standardized test and grade point average requirements of recruits."

The army's current practice is to select candidates destined to become military physicians from among its high school graduate recruits. They then undergo seven years of medical training at universities at the army's expense, sharing classes with regular medical students, and join the military upon completion of their studies.

At the current rate, the army needs 70 new military physicians to enter its service every year. However, in 2006 only 46 candidates were accepted into its doctors' training program.

In 2008 that number dropped to 30, prompting the IDF to recruit from among soldiers already drafted and pull them from their units. As a result of its efforts, the IDF raised the number of trainees in its medicine course to 50 - still 20 people short of its target.

Another way of boosting the dwindling number of physicians in its service has been to try and persuade Jewish physicians from abroad to move to Israel and join the IDF.

The IDF claims that while its plan to open a medical school of its own will allow it to lower academic demands from candidates, it will also enable them to focus their selection process on psychological exams testing recruits' ability to function in the military.

A senior military official said about the plan that it would produce "doctors that suit the army's needs, certainly more than today's graduates."

Despite the IDF's optimism, Beyar believes the plan will damage the medical school system that had acquired a good worldwide reputation because of its ability to incorporate military and civilian students in the same program.

"We must not in any way break this system and create a military medical school," he wrote. "We must continue to maintain the current system and solve the IDF's doctor shortage using a mechanism that will continue to incorporate the existing universities equally."

He added, "I request you note my whole-hearted opposition to the creation of a military medical school in the current format. [Such a plan] will damage the field of medicine in Israel and cause irreparable damage."