Five fellowship programmes at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) have achieved accreditation by the ACGME-I, the international arm of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), designed to ensure the high quality of training of doctors in their residency and fellowship years. This achievement cements HMC’s position as an internationally recognised teaching institution and academic medical centre and is instrumental in helping to build capacity and capability to support the organisation’s future expansion plans.
The five newly accredited fellowship programmes are cardiology, endocrinology, infectious disease, nephrology and oncology. “To achieve this prestigious accreditation, we were required to demonstrate that our fellowship programmes met the stringent ACGME-I standards in six areas of medical competency: medical knowledge, clinical skills, interpersonal and communication skills, practice based learning and improvement, system based practice and professionalism,” said Dr Abdullatif Al Khal (pictured), Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Director of Medical Education at HMC.
“The successful accreditation of these five programmes demonstrates our commitment at HMC to fostering the best learning environment for our doctors. We recognise the importance of creating such a highly conducive learning environment for improving the care we provide to our patients,” he added.
These accreditations are a significant achievement that takes HMC’s subspecialty training programmes to a new level. The healthcare organisation has also achieved accreditation for 14 of its residency training programmes. This new milestone also sees HMC become the first health care system outside the United States and Singapore to achieve ACGME-I accreditation for its subspecialty programmes.
"A significant amount of work, time and resources went into the preparation of these fellowship programmes," said Dr Al Khal. “I am proud of the effort and commitment that has gone into them by all faculty members, especially the programme directors.”
The programme directors include Dr Awad Al Qahtani for Cardiology Fellowship; Dr Sara Darwish for Endocrinology Fellowship; Dr Muna Al Maslamani for Infectious Disease Fellowship; Dr Omar Fituri for Nephrology Fellowship and Dr Salha Bujassoum for Oncology Fellowship.
The ACGME accredits US-based hospitals and medical centres to ensure the highest standard of training for doctors in their residency and fellowship years.
