July 27, 2011

The Over the Shoulder program gives recent graduates of Iraqi medical schools a chance to get hands-on training with U.S. military physicians and other medical personnel to see how they do their jobs and in July 2010 Lt. Col. Edward McDaniel found himself in charge of it.

As the medical director of the Ortiz Medical Clinic at Forward Operating Base Prosperity in Iraq, Dr. McDaniel was responsible for personnel, resources and the training of medics.

Lt. Col. Edward McDaniel

During his 6-month stint at Ortiz, he oversaw about a dozen young Iraqi physicians who rotated through the Over the Shoulder program, before returning in January 2011 to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where he is an internist and director of medicine performance improvement and patient safety.

How and why did the program get started?

When the Iraq war broke out, many Iraqi doctors fled the country, taking with them the ability for the future generation of doctors to get the training and the expertise to practice medicine.

The Over the Shoulder program started in March 2010 as a collaboration of the U.S. embassy and the Department of Defense to help transition from operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn.

This transition from marked the beginning of a focus on diplomatic relations, which led to the formation of an outreach program aimed at giving Iraqi medical students a chance to learn about the American health care system at the Ortiz Clinic, which is the largest medical center within the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Straight out of medical school, two students at a time would rotate into the clinic and they literally watched over our shoulders to see how we took care of patients and worked with nurses, radiology, the lab, how we dealt with trauma patients, triage. We also spent time teaching them how we learn medicine. Their medical school training had all been in English so they know the language very well. Dr. Mike Bunning was the senior medical adviser for the State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Baghdad and was a key individual in putting this program together.

Describe your experience as director of the program.

I feel that we learned about their cultures and their health care system. I got there in July 2010 and was passed the baton by my colleagues who were going back home. It was my first time meeting Iraqi people in general. And it required interaction at an intense level for 8 hours a day, working together and discussing medicine.

Describe the students.

They were very bright, the cream of the crop from the University of Baghdad and teaching hospitals in other cities. They had volunteered for the program so I got the sense that they were really dedicated to doing it and open to trying something different. They rotated in for 2-3 weeks at a time, which sounds like a short period, but given that it was their first time meeting Americans and because of the intensity of the program, it probably felt like a long time for them.

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