BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

was a shortage of doctors. In addition, senior hospital physicians at Soroka Medicla Center were sent to see patients in outlying development towns such as Dimona, Ofakim, Nitivot and Kiryat Gat. Specialization in Family Medicine Despite these steps, it was clear to me that this was not enough. I knew that the thing that would be decisive in the standing of family medicine was nothing short of having a specialization in the field. In Israel, the scientific council of the Israel Medical Association was the body regulating medical specializations. Just as the scientific council has four-and-a-half and five year specialization programs for a host of medical specialties, and in certain fields, even longer ones, I hoped that there would be a four-year specialization in family medicine. Such a program would include a two-year rotation among the various departments in the hospital, followed by two years residency in a clinic operating with the doctor-nurse team model. The attending physician mentoring a resident’s specialization would have to be a specialist in family medicine; and, like any other specialization, there would be two qualification exams (stage one and stage two). The scientific council of the Israel Medical Association did collaborate in this endeavor. It approved a specialization program in family medicine in 1969. Prof. Yair Yodfat, who was among the pioneers of doctor-nurse teamwork in Clalit clinic in Beit Shemesh, a development town at the foot of the Jerusalem Hills wrote a booklet entitled, “Family Medicine,” in which he stated that the decisive factor in developing family medicine was creating 150 job positions for specialists in family medicine. Although I considered doing so a great privilege and knew this was essential, it wasn’t easy to do so since I had to fund it out of Clalit’s budget, for which I was responsible. In 2012, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) heaped high praise on the primary medicine system in Israel, citing it as perhaps one of the best in the western world. 67 Why? This was due to two major factors: One was the more than two thousand family medicine specialists and clinic directors that have transformed the face and the quality of family medicine in Israel, and the other was the initiation of Israel’s National Program for Quality Indicators. It would be apt at this juncture to say a word about the first department of family medicine in the Clalit network, which opened at the Central Hospital for the Emek in Afula, in the Jezreel Valley. The moving force behind establishment of the department was Prof. Hava Tabenkin, who had come from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and for many years also served as department head in Afula. 68 The department dealt with specialization of family physicians in the North. When the new Carmel Hospital opened in Haifa in 1976, I saw there were conditions suitable for establishing a department of community medicine, including family medicine, in the spirit of Prof. Sidney Kark’s doctrine of community-oriented primary care. We brought in Prof. Leon Epstein, 69 a protégé of Prof. Kark, to serve as department head. He settled in Haifa and began to develop epidemiology and family medicine in this region of the country, visiting clinics in the Galilee and throughout the north. The dean of the Technion’s Faculty of Medicine was Prof. 67 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): OECD Reviews of Health Care Quality: Israel 2012: Raising standards. OECD Publishing, 2012. 172 pp. Available for reading at: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/social-issues-migration-health/oecd-reviews-of-health-care-quality-israel 2012_9789264029941-en#page1 68 Prof. Hava Tabenkin (1947- ) was born in Jerusalem, and studied medicine in Tel Aviv, and then specialized in family medicine. She worked for years as a family doctor in the Jordan Valley settlements, the Beit Shaan development town, and kibbutzim in the Jezreel Valley. Between 1987-2014, she was director of the family medicine department at the Emek Medical Center and director of the Clalit’s Northern Region. She served as chair of the Israel Association of Family Physicians. She also was the first female professor of family medicine in Israel - in the Ben Gurion University Faculty of Health Sciences. 69 Prof. Leon Epstein (1935- ) was born in South Africa, studied medicine there, and immigrated to Israel in 1958. He was an epidemiologist and specialist in Community-Oriented Primary Care (COPC) at the Department for Social Medicine at the Hebrew University medical school (1965-1975). Then he became director of Rambam Hospital in Haifa (1979-1981) and also was director of the department of family health and the community at the Technion medical school and at the Clalit in Haifa (1975-1990). After that, he became director of the department for social medicine at Hadassah and the School of Public Health and Social Medicine at the Hebrew University (1990-2003).

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