RSU to open a new clinical training centre in Israel

On Wednesday 3 April Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) signed a cooperation agreement with Bar-Ilan University and Ziv Medical Center establishing a clinical training centre. This will provide RSU students who wish to become physicians an even more international path. As of this autumn, RSU students will have the opportunity to undergo their clinical placement in orthopaedics in Israel under the leadership of experienced physicians.

From the left: RSU Vice-Rector for Health Studies, Gutnis Bahs, RSU Rector Professor Aigars Pētersons, and the Head of the Ziv Medical Centre Department of Orthopaedics, Alexander Lerner.

The agreement stipulates that during the upcoming academic year 4th-year medical students will undergo a 16-day placement in Safed, Israel. The cooperation with the Israeli university and clinic is specifically in orthopaedics, a field in which the RSU has already cooperated with its Israeli partners for many years. Alexander Lerner, a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University and the Director of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Ziv Medical Center, is a renowned traumatologist and orthopaedist specialising in the treatment of injuries to the extremities caused during military conflicts. He is a long-standing cooperation partner of the RSU Department of Orthopaedics.

From the left: Prof. Aigars Pētersons, and Prof. Alexander Lerner

RSU has put a lot of effort into developing collaborations with universities and clinics abroad in the last few years – RSU has opened a clinical training centre at the Lukaskrankenhaus in the city of Neuss in Germany, and also launched a similar cooperation with Azienda Sanitaria di Bolzano hospital in Bolzano in Northern Italy. The cooperation with Bolzano provides prospective physicians with the opportunity to learn about surgery, internal diseases and a specialisation of the student’s own choosing, as well as to volunteer. Students earn credit points after the successful completion of the placement. 

RSU intends to expand its network by establishing clinical training centres in the Scandinavian countries and in several German cities over the next few years. For the past years several dozen local and international RSU students have taken advantage of the opportunity to undergo their placements abroad. Israel is among the countries consistently represented among RSU international students and there are currently 60 students from Israel at RSU.

The cooperation agreement was concluded during RSU Research Week which consisted of three large-scale international conferences gathering students and research institutes from Latvia and abroad covering healthcare and a number of social science topics.