Teaching Psychiatry on the Global Scene: The Cornell University Experience

Qatar is a small country located on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula inWestern Asia. With a surface area barely exceeding 10,000 km and a population of about two million people, it is currently one of the largest exporters of liquid natural gas globally. Because of the sudden rise in revenues from energy resources, Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world. Rather than depending on a fuel-based economy alone, however, the political leadership plans to transform Qatar into a “knowledge-based economy” by investing in people and services. To that end, Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) partnered with several renowned universities to establish branches in Qatar. In collaboration with QF, Cornell University in New York established the first medical school in Qatar in 2002. Like the main campus in NewYork, theWeill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) has a tripartite mission of fostering excellence in medical education, research, and clinical care [1]. Students are admitted with the same admission criteria and follow the same curriculum as students at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) in New York City. They also take the same exams and adhere to the same criteria for evaluation, promotion, and graduation. The inaugural class, graduating in 2008, had 15 students (nine women and six men) representing seven different nationalities. In 2015, the number rose to 43, and the trend of diversity in gender, nationality, religion, and native languages continues. Stakeholders in Qatar hope that many of the alumni will train in the USA but eventually return to practice in Qatar. Because psychiatry relates more to culture than most other medical specialties, teaching psychiatry has been somewhat of a challenge. We have earlier reported on the state of psychiatry in Qatar [2]. Here we describe our experience teaching psychiatry at WCMC-Q since its inception several years ago. Although there is much written about psychiatric education internationally, teaching at WCMC-Q offers the additional challenge of transferring a US curriculum to the Middle East.