Sackler School of Medicine, Israel
Location: Israel
Time required for MD: 4 years
Student Loans: Stafford Loans and others
Tuition: $22,000 per year
Year founded: 1964
About Sackler School of Medicine
Tel Aviv University’s Medical School was established in 1964. In 1972, the school was officially named the Sackler School of Medicine and moved into a new two story building. Today, the Faculty consists of four schools: Medicine, Dental Medicine, Continuing Medical Education, and Health Professions (physical therapy, occupational therapy, communication disorders, and nursing).
Many Sackler physicians have earned international reputations for their research and clinical work in their specialties. Just as many participate in projects with the National Institutes of Health and other prestigious organizations, as well as with prominent institutes and universities around the world.
The Sackler School of Medicine has ten preclinical and 19 clinical departments. It offers programs leading to the M.D. degree, as well as M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in various medical and health sciences. More than 600 Israeli students are enrolled in the Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine M.D. program.
New York State/American Program
On a parallel track, approximately 300 students are enrolled in the New York State/American Program, designed specifically for medical students from the United States. Created in 1976, this unique program is taught entirely in English, with its curriculum and teaching methods modeled after those of U.S. medical schools. Classes are small, and classroom, laboratory, and clinical sessions are supplemented by self-study, tutoring, and small group seminars. The four year course of study is spent at the Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine and its affiliated hospital departments.
Teaching institutions whose departments are affiliated with Sackler include seven major medical centers, six psychiatric hospitals, 20 research institutes, and a large rehabilitation center.
The Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine New York State/American Program is fully recognized and approved by the State of Israel and is listed in the World Health Organization’s World Directory of Medical Schools. It is chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York and is one of only two programs in the world recognized outside the United States that are registered by the University of the State of New York/State Education Department. It is not accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the private U.S. professional agency in medical education (constituted by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges), since LCME policy is to accredit only U.S. and Canadian medical schools. The New York State Education Department has reported that the program “meets or exceeds accepted standards of academic quality.”
It is the goal of a Sackler education to provide medical graduates with an exceptional academic foundation in the science of human disease and the clinical skills to translate that knowledge into accurate diagnoses and treatment. Equally important, the program strives to cultivate in its graduates the qualities that foster an empathic, ethical doctor patient relationship. Graduating physicians are encouraged to build their own career long commitment to professional self-assessment and continuing education, to keep pace with the rapid changes in medicine.
Curriculum Reform
Like many other medical schools around the world, the Sackler School of Medicine is undergoing a major reform of both the content and methods of teaching in its curriculum.
One of the aims of the new program is to prepare future doctors to cope with the explosive growth of knowledge (currently doubling every 30 months) and with the availability of information through the internet. In the new curriculum, the student is placed at the center and trained in the skills needed to take responsibility for acquiring knowledge independently. Students learn the skills and habits of critical thinking that form the basis of evidence-based medicine.
The new curriculum also stresses the integration of clinical and basic knowledge and a systematic approach to solving medical problems, with equal importance given to teaching a humanitarian attitude toward the patient and their needs. Strengthening the connection between physician and patient, and between the medical world and the patient’s social world, is accomplished through a program called MPS (Medicine Patient Society). This series of interrelated courses trains medical students to combine the biomedical aspects of health and disease with mental, ethical, and social issues, skills that future physicians will need when treating patients and their families.
The new curriculum combines teaching in Ethics, Anthropology, History, and Philosophy alongside the practice of core medical skills, along with early exposure to clinical problems from the very first stages of a student’s medical education.
Medical education, being a demanding discipline, is naturally influenced by changes in teaching methods. The modern approach is integrative, employing an interdisciplinary study of the body’s systems. This requires small group teaching, with the teacher’s role shifting mainly to facilitation, while the main effort goes into self-study based on well planned, well prepared syllabi. This teaching method is used throughout a student’s studies; the number of frontal lectures has decreased, and students are expected to take responsibility for preparing for small study groups.
This approach demands a considerable degree of independent thinking and self-study from students. The School therefore provides preclinical and clinical advisors who serve as role models and help students work through the problems and dilemmas that inevitably arise.
Clinical teaching worldwide is gradually shifting from in hospital to ambulatory settings, and Sackler students likewise complete more of their clinical training in outpatient clinics than in the past. Special emphasis is placed on tutoring and monitoring students’ clinical performance, improving their interpersonal skills, and teaching them to communicate with patients effectively and with sensitivity. A Clinical Skills laboratory has recently been created at Sheba Medical Center, giving students the opportunity to learn clinical skills using simulated patients, computer simulations, sophisticated animated models, and other modern techniques. Students track their own progress in acquiring clinical skills throughout their training with the aid of a clinical skills checklist.
Another important way of advancing critical thinking skills, which form the basis of evidence-based medicine, is through Problem Based Learning (PBL), where the main emphasis is again placed on independent learning and understanding of clinical procedures. Students must understand, not simply memorize, the fundamental knowledge needed to analyze and manage the clinical cases presented to them.
We are confident that the new curriculum will train young physicians who are prepared to practice scientific and humane medicine, ready to meet the challenges of practicing medicine in the new millennium.
Sackler Faculty Research Achievements
- Identification of several hereditary diseases in the fields of purine metabolism, calcium metabolism, and blood coagulation
- Discovery of important physiological properties of the vasoactive intestinal peptide
- Significant contributions in the field of in vitro fertilization
- Identification of Laron syndrome (a type of dwarfism, named for the Sackler scientist who first described it)
- Advances in the treatment of familial Mediterranean fever
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