In real life, their paths would never cross. These international medical students live side by side, but come from a region so divided by conflict, they inhabit completely separate worlds.
But for a brief time this summer, their lives have collided. They share meals and classroom time in a unique pediatric medicine program run by Mount Sinai Hospital's Silverman Centre for International Health. It's designed to bring together Canadian medical students with those from Israel, Jordan and Palestine, and break down barriers in an area of “contested history, disputed entitlements and power differentials.”
“As an Israeli living in Tel Aviv, I've never had the chance to talk at length with a Palestinian doctor. This is an unusual opportunity to hear the other side and see how much we have in common,” says Michal Shaubi over coffee and toast at a sunny breakfast table in the downtown Toronto student residence where she and her colleagues live.
Michal Shaubi from Tel Aviv University, left, and University of Western Ontario student, David Fahmy. The program aims to forge links between the students that will carry on as professional partnerships once they return home.
Vibrant, with red-framed glasses that match her polished toes, Ms. Shaubi, 26, is maintaining a strict kosher regimen, and carries around a pink plastic bowl and cup in her knapsack to keep milk and meat products separate. A student at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion University, she is thrilled to meet Ghada Atallah, a Palestinian in her final year of medical school at Al Quds University in the West Bank.
The exchange, the only one of its kind in the world, is run in partnership with Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and the Canada International Scientific Exchange Program (CISEPO).
It's the brainchild of Arnold Noyek, a renowned Toronto ear, nose and throat specialist who has forged a second career as a medical diplomat.
“We are a network of peaceful, co-operative professionals,” says the energetic 72-year-old. “We stay out of politics, but we have managed to sustain the program for the past 15 years. It's a model of international medical co-operation.”
The eight students aren't just learning how to suture wounds and set broken bones. The program is also a lesson in cultural diversity: They have sampled maqlobeh , a Jordanian specialty, attended Shabbat dinner in the home of a local Jewish physician, visited Niagara Falls and seen their first Blue Jays game.
And they have delved into controversial issues, including the causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the influence of culture on ethics and medicine.
“We haven't ignored the elephant in the room,” says David Fahmy, 25, a second-year medical student at the University of Western Ontario. “We've talked about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and I don't think either side has managed to convince the other. But it's incredible that people who are so heavily invested in the conflict can get along.”
Their free-ranging chat over breakfast covers everything from the limited access of Israel's Bedouin community to abortion to the differing attitudes toward advanced cardiac life support.
In Canada, a patient's family is encouraged to be in the room during resuscitation, and a social worker is there to support the family. Doctors respect “do not resuscitate” orders (DNRs).
In hospitals in Jordan and Palestine, neither families nor social workers are allowed in the operating room to observe resuscitation, says Mohamad Yousef, a sixth-year medical student from Jordan. There are also no DNRs. “If it was within the law, I would always work to save a patient, even if they didn't want me to,” he says.
At Al Quds hospital, the burden of breaking the news of a child's death falls squarely on the doctor, Ms. Atallah adds. “There is no support team, and doctors cannot spend a lot of time with the family because they are so busy,” she notes.
