Ten years of Medicine and Surgery

Introduced by the speeches of Professor Alessandro Sgambato, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, and Professor Giovanni Delogu, Vice President of the degree programme, and Don Alessandro Mantini, Pastoral Assistant and Professor of Theology at the Rome Campus, the history and experiences of the academic body were then recounted by some of the professors of the Faculty.

“After ten years,” said Professor Sgambato, “the importance and the educational and strategic value of this degree programme is very clear. Recalling the beginnings of the activation of this international programme, we can say today that the goal of training ‘global doctors’ with well-founded scientific and clinical skills and a strong ethical commitment has indeed been achieved. In celebrating this milestone, we cannot fail to remember the people who, first and foremost, strongly believed in this new degree programme and made a fundamental contribution to its launch, in particular the Magnifico Rettore Professor Franco Anelli, the then Dean of the Faculty Professor Rocco Bellantone, and the first President of the programme, Professor Gigliola Sica.”

“The Faculty of Medicine and Surgery,” added Fr. Mantini, “was Father Gemelli’s ‘dream’: this course is a dream within a dream and you students are its children, in the name of knowledge, solidarity, human formation, spirituality and in the dialogue that creates the true community of people.”

And it is precisely in dialogue that Professor Delogu identified the key and one of the main strengths of the programme: “Today we are celebrating ten years of successes and achievements that we could not even imagine ten years ago. We have been able to bring so many didactic, experiential and educational innovations above all thanks to a dialogue and constant collaboration between teachers and students that the future will certainly see further consolidate.”

The degree programme in Medicine and Surgery started in the academic year 2013/2014 with the first group of enrolled students; already in 2016 more than two thirds of the freshmen were international, mainly from Mediterranean countries and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and Gulf regions. Since then, students have come from more than 100 countries on five continents and the Class 2029 that has just started now has 100 young students, three-quarters of them international.

To date, the programme – which now has around 450 students enrolled over the six years of the degree curriculum – has graduated 214 doctors: some have returned to their home countries, others have begun post-graduate training in the United Kingdom, others have become post-docs in prestigious EU institutions, and still others are attending internship programmes in the United States. The majority of Italian graduates have remained in our country, a choice that is increasingly being made also by a growing number of foreign graduates.

“The future promises to be even more successful,” said Professor Giovanni Gambassi, President of the degree programme, in his speech, recalling the programme’s valuable and now solid collaborations with important international universities, first and foremost Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia: “We are building a growing network with partner institutions mainly in North America, but also in the Gulf region, Asia and Australia. A learning agreement has been signed with Johns Hopkins University and a memorandum of understanding with Yale University, and students have already completed elective rotations at affiliated hospitals, while intensive preparatory work is underway to conclude an agreement with Qatar University in Doha, Wenzhou Medical University in China, and Bond University on the Gold Coast in Australia, testifying to the truly international nature of this programme and the growing opportunities for all our students.”