Teaching about health systems in the UAE

Dear Sir

In many countries, health systems face challenges as they adapt to demographic change, new disease patterns and rising costs. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is no exception. Its health system is facing the twin challenges of maintaining quality while avoiding escalating costs. As the future leaders of the health system in which they work, medical students will be in a strong position to bring about change and improvement. However their effectiveness will be restricted by gaps in their knowledge of what health systems are and how they function, topics that are rarely dealt with in medical school curricula (Patel et al. 2009). The undergraduate medical curriculum should prepare students not only for clinical excellence but also to take their place as leaders of complex health systems (Berwick & Finkelstein 2010).

The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University is the UAE's main public medical school. To improve medical students' understanding of health systems, we introduced a three-hour interactive session on Challenges facing the UAE health care system for final-year medical students. Students participated in a group discussion during which the strengths and challenges of the UAE health care system were considered along with recommendations for improvement. The issues raised by the students were grouped into themes based on the World Health Organization's Key Components of a well functioning health system. The students completed an on-line evaluation of the session.

Strengths of the UAE health system included improvement in health, investment in service provision and development of medical education. Challenges were identified in organisation and leadership, lack of data for decision-making and human resources issues. Recommendations included better management of services and medical education reform. Most students agreed that having an opportunity to learn about health systems was important and relevant.

The teaching session described here is only a very small part of the undergraduate curriculum but it is meeting an important need. We recommend that health systems teaching is included in the undergraduate medical curriculum in order to prepare newly qualified physicians to find their place in shaping, leading and improving health services in the future.

Amer Ahmad Sharif and Iain Blair, Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, PO Box 17666, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]