ED Hosts Landmark International Training- Clinical & Research News - For and about the Physicians and Researchers of Brigham and Women's HospitalED Hosts Landmark International Training- Clinical & Research News - For and about the Physicians and Researchers of Brigham and Women's Hospital

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ED Hosts Landmark International Training

A contingent of Israeli and Palestinian emergency medicine nurses and doctors cast aside traditional differences and traveled together to BWH last month as part of an unprecedented Jewish-Arab cooperative effort to bring the best and most advanced health care to the battle-scarred holy city of Jerusalem and throughout that conflicted region.

BWH's Institute for International Emergency Medicine and Health (IEMH) in the Department of Emergency Medicine hosted seven Israelis and five Palestinian nurses for two weeks of clinical emergency care observation, trauma-nursing training and exercises in STRATUS. Jacob Assaf, MD, chief of Emergency Medicine at Hadassah Ein Kerem, and Tawfiq Nasser, CEO of Augusta Victoria Hospital, joined the visiting nurses on Francis Street for a few days.

“The nurses and doctors deserve the credit for making this idea a reality,” said Mark Davis, MD, MS, director of BWH's IEMH and founder of Peace Through Health, a landmark program helping to build bridges between traditional adversaries who now work shoulder to shoulder as ED nurses and doctors caring for all patients.

This initiative is funded by the United States Department of State to improve health and relations between the communities in conflict. BWH is helping to train the medical personnel providing care as Hadassah Medical Organization and Augusta Victoria Hospital are working together in making significant strides in the delivery of emergency care.

“In the old days, when an Israeli delegation would walk into a room, the Arab delegation would walk out, but for us to focus on people, on patients, it will benefit the ethos of the whole area,” Nasser said.

Assaf said he had doubts that Israelis and Palestinians would work together on this project when he first heard about it. “This is amazing for me to see this group together after four years of planning it, and I did not believe it was possible in the beginning,” he said. “This is a good bridge to what is blooming now and that is peace in our region.”

Davis, whom both Assaf and Nasser credit for the successes of the Peace Through Health program, served as a student under Assaf more than 10 years ago.

Ron Walls, MD, chairman of BWH's Department of Emergency Medicine, admits to having some doubts when Davis first presented his vision almost four years ago. “Mark proved the skeptics wrong,” Walls said, “This remarkable partnership of Israeli and Palestinian nurses and doctors, guided and nurtured by BWH, has already improved emergency care in this troubled part of the world.”