Twenty-five students from nine schools were invited to WCMC-Q to take part in the programme.
High school students spent two weeks at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q), discovering what life as a medical student is like, in the annual Winter Qatar Medical Explorer Programme.
Twenty-five students from nine schools were invited to WCMC-Q to take part in the programme, which gave them the opportunity to hear lectures from senior faculty members, take part in a series of workshops, quiz current medical students about their experiences and conduct experiments in the college’s laboratories.
The Winter Qatar Medical Explorer Programme, which is aimed at high school students in grades 10, 11 and 12, is designed to give the students a comprehensive introduction to college life and the study of medicine, and to give them an idea of the many different career paths a medical degree can offer.
Following an introductory session at the beginning of the programme with Noha Saleh, director of student recruitment and outreach at WCMC-Q, and Syed Ahmed Hasnain, programmes manager, the students spent their two weeks exploring almost every area of the college and its curriculum.
They were given introductions to biology, chemistry and physics, both in lectures and in the labs, and visited the Clinical Skills Centre to learn how to work with standardised patients and discover more about the heart with Harvey, the centre’s lifelike mechanical dummy.
Dr Rachid Bendriss, assistant dean for student recruitment, outreach and foundation programmes, spoke to the students about reading strategies for college, while Dr Rodney Sharkey, associate professor of English, held sessions on understanding poetry and narratives. The students were also introduced to the college’s state-of the-art distributed eLibrary.
The second week featured sessions on careers in medicine, adolescent health, pharmacology and medical ethics, plus a visit to the Qatar Robotic Surgery Centre at Qatar Science & Technology Park.
The students received guidance on how to write effective personal statements and techniques for succeeding in college admissions interviews. Throughout the programme, the students worked in small groups to produce presentations on a health-related topic to deliver on the penultimate and final days of the programme, which then ended with a closing ceremony on February 5.
“The programme, part of our Cornell Enrichment series, gives the students the chance to explore the college, our curriculum, and all the many exciting possibilities presented by a career in medicine with a great level of depth,” said Saleh.
“The aim is to provide a truly immersive experience so that they can get a very accurate impression of what it would be like to become a full-fledged medical student at WCMC-Q,” said Dr Bendriss.
The students were drawn from a variety of schools across Qatar and were selected based on their academic aptitude and interest in the sciences. The high schools represented on this year’s programme were Mosaab Bin Omair School for Boys, Al Wakra Independent School for Girls, Al Wakra Independent School for Boys, Al-Eman School for Girls, Al Bayan Secondary School, Global Academy International School, Qatar Independent Secondary School, Amna Bint Wahab Independent School for Girls and Michael E DeBakey High School – Qatar. This year, 20 of the 25 students who took part were Qatari nationals.
Hissa Mohamed, aged 16, of Al Bayan Secondary School said: “It has been very useful to come here because I have learned about the different fields of medicine and about what it is like to be a student and spend time in the labs doing experiments.”
