Terror Medicine as Part of the Medical School Curriculum

Abstract

Terror medicine, a field related to emergency and disaster medicine, focuses on medical issues ranging from preparedness to psychological manifestations specifically associated with terrorist attacks. Calls to teach aspects of the subject in American medical schools surged after the 2001 jetliner and anthrax attacks. Although the threat of terrorism persists, terror medicine is still addressed erratically if at all in most medical schools. This paper suggests a template for incorporating the subject throughout a 4-year medical curriculum. The instructional framework culminates in a short course for fourth year students, such as one recently introduced at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA. The proposed 4-year Rutgers curriculum serves as a model that could assist other medical schools contemplating the inclusion of terror medicine in pre-clerkship and clerkship training.

A Course on Terror Medicine: Content and Evaluations

“…The course introduces fourth year students to the field of Terror Medicine and its relationship to Emergency and Disaster Medicine. It explores medical features distinctively associated with terrorism events in four broad areas: preparedness, incident management, nature of injuries, and psychological issues 4 …”

“…The elective is part of a plan to broaden familiarity and develop competency in the subject throughout the medical school curriculum. 3 This study provides an overview of the course over three iterations and reactions to it by participants.…”

Implementation of disaster medicine education in German medical schools – a nationwide survey

“…When asked to identify a suitable format to teach and enhance disaster medicine education, elective coursework was preferred by 88% of the medical schools, while only 56% were in favor of establishing it as its own field of study and teaching. However, it has been shown that while electives are highly accepted by students, electives are only able to reach a few students and can therefore only be a temporary remedy [ 25 ], [ 32 ], [ 33 ]. This rather cautious attitude towards engagement in enhancing disaster medicine teaching may also be explained from the responses that most medical schools expected financial and administrative obstacles when expanding disaster medicine teaching.…”

Dynamics of antioxidant-prooxidant balance in abdominal injury with underlying hypovolemic shock and reperfusion syndrom of the limbs in experiment

“…It should be noted that the number of victims is of a massive character. These "unique injuries" are connected with terrorism creating substantial difficulties for the existing systems to give emergency medical aid, both from the point of view of organization and provision of aid [9][10][11]. The factors complicating the work of emergency medical aid system and influencing on the quality of giving aid to the injured people are: time delay of pre-admission stage, specificity of the obtained injuries, an unpredictable course of associated traumas, considering the character of the applied damaging factor, and inadequately trained medical staff.…”