From next academic year, doctors will be better prepared to deal with war victims. ‘I hope, of course, that it never comes to this, but we must not bury our heads in the sand,’ says Piet Hoebeke, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Ghent University (UGent).
Ensuring healthcare students are better prepared for potential conflict situations. This is what the Belgian defence and public health ministries would like to see and they are now asking Belgian universities to pay more attention to this. It’s a message the deans of the Flemish faculties of medicine are already responding to.
‘For a resilient population, we need healthcare as well as an army. We want to ensure that students are aware of what can go wrong and how best to respond,’ says Piet Hoebeke, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at UGent.
Preparing for war injuries
A group of experts is looking at how more military aspects can be integrated into medicine training. This may range from an optional subject to an extra master's programme. Resilience can also be addressed in other courses, for example those for physiotherapists and nurses. The changes to training will start next year.
‘We should not wait too long. If we start now, we will only see the result in six years, when doctors graduate,’ says Filip Lardon, dean of Medicine and Health Sciences at Antwerp’s UAntwerp university.
‘War is a very special situation that requires much more expertise in things like trauma medicine, emergency medicine and orthopaedic surgery. Of course, we already have very competent doctors in these fields, but acting in conflict situations is of a different calibre and requires extra explanation for the students,’ Professor Lardon says.
‘Students are - to be clear - already well educated with regard to different types of catastrophes even now, but we clearly want to bring military medicine aspects together in one package,’ says Dean Hoebeke. ‘We don’t want to panic, but at the same time we must not bury our heads in the sand.’
New warfare of the 21st century
The 21st century brings with it new ways of waging war. Just think of new technologies or biological weapons. Experts are also taking this into account.
‘There is a lot of experience with war wounds especially in Ukraine,’ says Professor Hoebeke. ‘The wounds after a drone attack are completely different from the traumas we know from World War II. So from that military perspective, a lot of knowledge can still be transferred.’
‘Today, we also have to consider biological, chemical and bacterial catastrophes. Doctors will be prepared for all these situations. A forewarned man is worth two,’ Professor Hoebeke concludes.