Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery (ORL-HNS) professionals from Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), who are currently preparing for the Arab Board examination, have attended the seventh Qatari Course for Board Review in ORL-HNS held recently at Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City.

During the three-day intensive course, the ORL-HNS professionals benefited from focused review sessions and engaged in discussions on various topics relevant to the examination.

The course attracted a total of 60 candidates from different countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Sudan, Iraq and the UAE.

The sessions were organised under the leadership of Dr Abdullatif al-Khal, HMC’s deputy chief of Medical, Academic and Research Affairs, HMC’s ORL-HNS Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) Section head and vice-president, Arab Board of health specialisation for ORL-HNS (ENT), Dr Abdulsalam al-Qahtani, who is also the programme director, and Dr Shanmugam Ganesan, associate programme director and ORL-HNS (ENT) senior consultant.

“Through this course, residents are given a wonderful opportunity to meet the professors, who are also the Arab Board examiners - they are the ones who prepare and manage the clinical and written exams, so residents have the prime advantage of receiving first-hand knowledge from them and important tips and guidelines that will assist them during the examination,” Dr Ganesan noted.

“Passing the Arab Board examination is extremely important as it will qualify residents to practise independently as specialists in different Gulf countries.”  

The guest lecturers invited for this year’s course included professor Mazin al-Khabori, president, Arab Board of health specialisation for ORL-HNS (ENT); professor Salah Mansour, former president, Arab Board of health specialisation for ORL-HNS (ENT); professor Jamal Ben Amer, professor of Otolaryngology, faculty of medicine of Garyounis, Libya; and professor Ismail Zohdi, HNS Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt.

A range of topics were covered during the course lectures, including embryology of ears, thyroid cancer, cochlear implant and hearing aid, fungal sinusitis, physiology of olfaction, management of cancer larynx and a thorough overview of head and neck long cases.

Assistant programme director and consultant, ORL-HNS (ENT) section, Dr Aisha Larem, said: “For this year’s course, along with discussions about the multiple-choice questions and other short ORL-HNS cases, the course also covered the Objective Structured Clinical Examination, a newly introduced part of the Arab Board exam.”

Larem explained that the course has become highly competitive now as all the residents who have taken the course in the last two years have successfully cleared their examination. “This is reflected in the number of interested candidates who applied for the course this year as this time we had almost double the number of applicants from the previous year.”

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