A matter of degrees: the introduction of clinical doctorates to the Saudi higher education system and a comparative prospective from the American model.

Recent unprecedented growth in Saudi population challenged its infrastructure and intensified demand for higher education and healthcare. In response, both the government and the private sector founded numerous colleges and universities, increasing the overall number from 8 to 49 institutions of higher education. A significant portion of the expansion has been in the health professions higher education, which also included the establishment of new teaching hospitals and other medical training facilities. As part of this growth, practice (clinical) doctorates have conspicuously made their presence felt in Saudi Arabia. The doctor of pharmacy is the first clinical doctorate that has been formally adopted as the terminal professional degree in the field. Others are in the works. Results are presented using descriptive methods. Data were collected from reviews of the literature and individual institutional websites of Saudi colleges, universities and salient governmental regulatory and national accrediting agencies. This article will introduce clinical doctorates, their status and state of implementation in the American health professions higher education system as a possible model. The article will review the current status of clinical doctorates' implementation in Saudi Arabia. It will conclude with a recommendation for concerned stake holders, including policy makers, educators, and practitioners.

Kathleen Mears Memorial Lecture: The magic of becoming an END technologist. Education: past, present, future.

We have all traveled various roads to becoming electroneurodiagnostic (END) technologists. END (formerly known as EEG) technology education began with informal mentorship such as on-the-job training. Later it progressed into formal educational training programs under the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP). The American Society of Electroneurodiagnostic Technologists (ASET) has been actively pursuing the formulation of a standardized END curriculum and educational resources that should make the process of starting a training program easier. ASET has already produced online courses that have become a valuable resource for educating END technologists. What's next? Could it possibly be a combination of the old and the new? Perhaps taking advantage of the strengths of both the mentorship and formal educational techniques could be an answer to meeting the ever-increasing demand for END technologists. Let's imagine!

Challenges and issues in health professions education in Africa.

The challenges facing health professions education in Africa focus on physical infrastructure, accreditation systems, student selection and faculty recruitment, retention, and development. Higher education in the health professions must be closely aligned with community health needs, and with the training and support of community health workers. A key ingredient in changing institutions in this way is implementation of effective strategies for strengthening the faculty. In addition, information systems, and their prerequisite stable electric power supply, must be supported by internal public resources combined with external aid. These infrastructure investments will facilitate better quality education, improved diffusion of information among schools, and more useful data for self study by institutions.

Hospital management training in the North Eastern Region.

The article highlights the lack of training facilities for hospital management in the entire North Eastern Region, explores the quantum of need of the training in the region by identifying hospitals, other health institutions and manpower in the region which require, for their qualitative and quantitative improvement, the expertise in hospital management, and recommends suitable courses of hospital management to start with.