Iraq: Beyond the war

Iraq: Beyond the war

Iraq has become synonymous with conflict. However it is home to millions of people who have the same healthcare demands you’ll find anywhere else.

BMJ worked in an active partnership with the Iraq Ministry of Health over a five year period to help achieve better healthcare in Iraq. During this time, BMJ clinical experts supported the Iraqi Ministry of Health with advice, online learning and clinical decision support tools.

BMJ Learning Iraq was customised to equip Iraqi doctors with high quality medical education resources that are proven to improve clinical care and outcomes. Over 43,000 online learning modules in 70 specialist subjects were completed by Iraqi doctors.  Of those 3,817 users, 88% believed it has improved their practice and 96% believe it will improve the care they deliver in the future.

Cultural shifts, steady adoption

A CME culture was quickly adopted among Iraqi doctors, with the usage metrics milestone met and exceeded by an outstanding 186%. And this rate continues to grow. Over one fifth of the nation’s clinicians now use BMJ Learning for CME purposes.

“ After years of wars, sanction and isolation from the international medical community, we restarted the journey of medical education with BMJ.  Over more than 3 years, about 4,000 doctors studied thousands of BMJ Learning modules and improved their daily practice of medicine in Iraq. The real success for any medical education is to induce a positive change on the provision of healthcare to the people, and this is totally fulfilled by BMJ Learning. I’m pleased and privileged to work with the wonderful team at BMJ and always looking forward to continuing our collaboration. “
      - Shakir Mahmood Muhammed, Chest Physician, HR Training & Development Centre,  Ministry of Health, Iraq

Iraqi doctors were also given access to high impact research from some of BMJ’s world-leading journals and clinical decision support tools. This gave Iraqi doctors the opportunity to publish their own research

“I used those modules in dealing with patients, complaints and complications in my field and in refreshing my knowledge in other fields. It was also a great opportunity to get free access to all those world-leading medical journals especially BMJ Case Reports in which I had the honour of publishing a case this year”
      - Dr Saad Muwafaq Attash