WCM-Q students take first step to becoming doctors

A total of 49 students of Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar’s Class of 2021 were presented with new white coats and stethoscopes in front of an audience of family, friends and WCM-Q faculty and staff at a ceremony.The presentation is a symbolic turning point, and marks the moment when the students, more than a third of whom are Qatari, begin the four-year medical curriculum at WCM-Q.The ceremony also welcomed 43 students — a quarter of whom are Qatari — who are joining WCM-Q’s six-year medical programme, which integrates two years of pre-medical training and the four-year medical curriculum.A further 24 students – 19 of whom are Qatari — have joined WCM-Q’s foundation class, a one-year programme intended to be a pathway to entry to the pre-medical programme.Dr Javaid Sheikh, dean of WCM-Q, said: “Putting on the white coat for the first time is a defining moment for all doctors. It is the moment when they take their first step into medicine and begin to learn the practical skills that will allow them to heal patients and to make a real difference to their local communities and the wider world.”Dr Abdul Badi Abou-Samra, chairman of medicine and deputy CMO at Hamad Medical Corp, Professor of Medicine at WCM-Q, and chairman of Qatar Metabolic Institute delivered the keynote speech.“Patients expect compassionate care and they should get what they expect. When you walk in a hospital with a clean, shiny white coat bearing the symbol of a prestigious medical college, many patients would see in you a scholar coming to specifically help them.Therefore, my advice is to remember this and to imagine that each patient is a family member, such as a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, a grandmother or a grandfather,” said Dr Abou-Samra.