[The Sheba Model Designed to Increase the Number of Medical Students in Israel through a Combination of Expansion of Teaching Hours, Simulation and the Opening of Designated Academic Clinics - Summary of 4 Years of Operation].

BACKGROUND

The shortage of medical manpower in Israel led the Sheba Medical Center in 2021 to establish its Education Authority. We began with multi-year strategic planning to expand the teaching capacity of medical students.

METHODS

The clinical teaching capacity at the medical center was expanded in three efforts: additional teaching hours in the afternoon and evening, shifting clinical teaching to simulation training, and additional clinical teaching in ambulatory clinics. Considering the Israeli universities' refusal to use the extensions, the new clinical fields were used to teach Israeli students from abroad, in faculties approved only by the Yatziv reform.

RESULTS

The number of teaching weeks at Sheba has increased significantly from 500 in the base to 876 weeks in the 2025 academic year, in anticipation of doubling the capacity in 2026 to1,000 teaching weeks in the hospitalization departments. The increase in clinical teaching hours in the afternoon and evening also caused a significant increase in teaching outputs in the morning. At the same time, a program was launched to establish clinics as part of the ambulatory services in the afternoons, and so far, 267 students in the fields of neurology, infectious diseases and gastrointestinal diseases have studied in this program. At the same time, instruction was diverted to simulation facilities in the anaesthesia and intensive care departments, the emergency medicine department, and the surgical division. These additions to the teaching capacity were dedicated to significantly improving the medical education of Israeli students studying abroad, providing a solution for students who were unable to continue their studies abroad due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently, due to reserve duty. It also outlined a solution for expanding teaching in the faculties in Israel, those which exist and those that will send students for clinical training in the coming years.

CONCLUSIONS

The experience of the Sheba Education Authority in the 4 years between 2021 and 2025 shows that it is possible to double the teaching capacity of the medical center. This success is based on a combination of expanding teaching to the afternoon and evening hours, opening designated teaching clinics in the afternoons, and diverting teaching to simulation facilities. Building on this experience, when adopted in other centres, will enable the transfer of medical studies back to Israel. This solution involves implementing an economic/managerial model that preserves physician-teacher faculty as full-timers and refuting old perceptions that have held back the Israeli health system for years. The Sheba Education Authority calls on all hospitals and the Israeli Ministry of Health to adopt this unique model.