The Hamas massacre of Oct 7, 2023, and its aftermath, medical crimes, and the Lancet commission report on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust.

Background: The report of the Lancet Commission on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust, released in November 2023, calls for this history to be required for all health professions education, to foster morally courageous health professionals who speak up when necessary.

Main Body: The report was released a month after Hamas' October 7 invasion of Israel, with the accompanying massacre of over 1200 people, taking of civilian hostages, and gender-based violence. These acts constitute crimes against humanity including genocide.

[THE MINI-CLINICAL EVALUATION EXERCISE (MINI CEX): PROMOTING OBSERVATION, EVALUATION AND FEEDBACK IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARDS THE IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPETENCE-BASED MEDICAL EDUCATION IN ISRAEL].

Competence-based medical education (CBME) re-shaped medical education in North America and in Europe and is making its first steps in Israel in recent years. This article reviews the literature regarding the Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (mini-CEX), a tool for the evaluation of clinical competencies in CBME. The mini-CEX has been adopted by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the European Federation of Internal Medicine (EFIM) and is cited in leading documents of these organizations on medical education.

Competency and confidence in ECG interpretation among medical students.

Objectives: To assess competency and confidence in ECG interpretation in medical students across years of medical school and evaluate the associations of various factors, a curriculum change, and student confidence with ECG competency.

Methods: Four hundred and fourteen (414) third- to sixth-year medical students participated in this cross-sectional study conducted in 2019 in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. A voluntary response sample of participants answered a validated, web-based questionnaire, composed of eight ECG strips.

From skepticism to openness: a qualitative narrative analysis of medical students' attitudes following an integrative medicine course.

Objective: The present study aimed to explore attitudes of medical students following a course in integrative medicine (IM) focused on palliative and supportive cancer.

Method: Attitudes to IM among pre-clerkship medical students were assessed following a 3-day required course, which included interviews with international experts in IM and "hands-on" workshops mentored by IM and non-IM healthcare professionals. Student reflections were analyzed qualitatively, and written narratives were examined thematically.

From the "what" to the "how": Teaching integrative medicine-related skills to medical students during COVID-19.

Objective: To examine the impact of an integrative medicine (IM) course on self-perceived IM-related communication and research skills.

Methods: A 3-day mandatory "hybrid" (online and in-person) IM course was held within COVID-19 restrictions for 161 pre-clerkship medical students, with workshops facilitated by mentor healthcare professionals (IM and non-IM) and student-directed tasks. Self-perceived levels of 6 IM-related skills were scored (from 1 to 5) for history-taking; communicating with patients with "alternative" health-beliefs; referral to IM consultations; assessing risks/benefits; and working with non-medical IM practitioners.

Empathy and boundary turbulence in cancer communication.

Objectives: To describe and deepen our understanding of patient-centeredness, empathy, and boundary management in challenging conversations. Previous studies show frequent physician self-disclosure, while empathy and boundary management are infrequent.

Methods: Three standardized patients (SPs) portrayed cancer patients consulting a new community-based physician, resulting in 39 audio-recorded SP visits to 19 family physicians and 20 medical oncologists.

[EXPERTISE IN MEDICINE].

The Israeli state accords the status of "specialist", after an authorization by the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) Scientific Council and Ministry of Health (MOH), to physicians who fulfilled the requirements for the title in the 56 recognized specialties in the country. An "expert" and "specialist" are synonyms in Hebrew. However, there is no doubt that these two terms are not identical.

[MEDICAL EDUCATION IN COVID-19 CRISIS DAYS - REFLECTIONS AND INSIGHTS, ON-LINE CLINICAL LEARNING RESOURCES].

The COVID-19 pandemic is a demonstration of an unforeseen event that disrupts normal life routine and greatly affects medical training. With its outbreak, clinical studies in medical schools were discontinued throughout the country, and the pre-clinical studies channeled into online learning, like all other university teaching activities. Since similar situations occurred in most western countries, a methodological approach of online teaching is required - principles, goals and implementation, with reference to the tension between the duty of care versus the duty of maintaining the clinician's and student's health.

[WHY EVERY HEALTH PROFESSIONAL NEEDS TO CONTEMPLATE MEDICINE DURING THE HOLOCAUST].

A growing interest in the realization, understanding and lessons of medicine and physicians' behavior during the Holocaust, is noted in the last two decades. In this incomprehensible time, the dark and enlightened faces of medicine reached an unprecedented (and hopefully will not ever recur) climax. We learn of the criminal conduct of Nazi medicine and Nazi physicians on the one hand, and the noble, faithful to the Hippocratic oath, behavior of some prisoner physicians and nurses on the other hand.

[THE DOCTOR IN THE DIGITAL AGE - COMPETENCIES NEEDED AND A ROAD MAP FOR THEIR ACHIEVEMENT].

The digital age has profoundly transformed our lives, including health and healthcare. The computer, the smart cellphone, digital communication, social networks, applications, the Electronic Medical Record, web-based medical knowledge availability, tele-medicine and a host of additional tools progress rapidly and seem to leave physicians behind, while the public adapts them willingly. This article enumerates the characteristics of the digital era in healthcare, Israel's leadership in health care application of information technology, the different domains of impact, additional competencies they mandate presently and, in the future, as well as associated ethical dilemmas.

[COMPETENCY BASED MEDICAL EDUCATION - A NEW PARADIGM FOR ISRAELI PHYSICIAN TRAINING].

During the last decades the dominant paradigm, in which the duration of a rotation/course, the required content to be learnt (the material covered) and a test (usually a multiple choice one) evaluating the knowledge of the content, were paramount, is being replaced by a new paradigm: outcome/competency based medical education (CBME, OBME). In this paper the reasons for adopting this change in the developed world are presented, its nature and basic assumptions enumerated and national examples of its adoption from Scotland, Canada, UK and USA described. We will present in some detail the changes this approach entails, the new definitions it adopts, the learning outcomes it aspires to and how to evaluate them.

The Holocaust, medicine and becoming a physician: the crucial role of education.

Learning about the abandonment of moral principles of healthcare professionals and scientists, their societies and academic institutions, to a murderous ideology yields fundamental concerns and global implications for present and future healthcare professionals' education and practice. Medicine's worst-case scenario raises deeply disturbing yet essential questions in the here and now: Could the Holocaust, one of the greatest evils ever perpetrated on humankind, have occurred without the complicity of physicians, their societies, and the scientific profession community? How did healers become killers? Can it happen again?We reflect here on those queries through the lens of the Second International Scholars Workshop on Medicine during the Holocaust and Beyond held in the Galilee, Israel on May 7-11, 2017 and derive contemporary global lessons for the healthcare professions. Following a brief historical background, implications of the history of medicine in the Holocaust are drawn including 1) awareness that the combination of hierarchy, obedience, and power constitutes a risk factor for abuse of power in medicine and 2) learning and teaching about medicine in the Holocaust and beyond is a powerful platform for supporting professional identity formation.

Grappling with complexity: Medical students' reflective writings about challenging patient encounters as a window into professional identity formation.

Aim: Clerkship-specific interactive reflective writing (IRW)-enhanced reflection may enhance professional identity formation (PIF), a fundamental goal of medical education. PIF process as revealed in students? reflective writing (RW) has been understudied.

Methods: The authors developed an IRW curriculum within a Family Medicine Clerkship (FMC) and analyzed students? reflections about challenging/difficult patient encounters using immersion-crystallization qualitative analysis.

Curriculum reform: Why? What? How? and how will we know it works?

In a recent IJHPR article, Dankner et al. describe a reform in one longitudinal strand within Basic Medical Education i.e.

Students as anatomy near-peer teachers: a double-edged sword for an ancient skill.

Background: A near-peer instructors (NPI) program was designed for 1st year medical students who successfully finished the Anatomy course, in order to develop their didactic ability and teaching skills, mostly for cadaver dissection.

Methods: Graduates of the training program were administered a voluntary survey at the end of the program, annually. Best graduates of the training program were offered a NPI position in the next academic year.

Medical education in Israel 2016: five medical schools in a period of transition.

Abstract: We reviewed the existing programs for basic medical education (BME) in Israel as well as their output, since they are in a phase of reassessment and transition. The transition has been informed, in part, by evaluation in 2014 by an International Review Committee (IRC). The review is followed by an analysis of its implications as well as the emergent roadmap for the future.