The IDF Medical Corps completed this week the largest doctors’ course in IDF history. The IDF’s website reported that 50 new doctors will be given their ranks next week and will be assigned to the various air, sea, and land IDF units.
Yedioth Ahronoth reported that once the ranks are given to the doctors, the IDF will officially close the doctors' shortage gap. The doctors will be assigned to 35 different battalions, of which 17 never had a regular doctor, relying on a paramedic or temporary physician.
The IDF’s Chief Medical Officer, Brigadier General Dr. Nachman Ash, told Yedioth Ahronoth: “In recent years, we’ve had to solve the shortage in different ways. About 25 troops did not have a regular doctor, and now we are completing the process that gives an answer to this essential need.”
Ash explained that the solution is due in part to a change in reserve conditions, which now include a refund of tuition fees and benefits. Also contributing to the change is an extensive campaign the IDF ran encouraging future soldiers to join the Medical Corps.
Ash, who gave the IDF’s future doctors their final examination, congratulated them and said: “These are doctors who are fully motivated, they are ready and willing to perform their duty. There is no doubt that from now on, with all the IDF’s field units manned by doctors, the response to our soldiers will also improve accordingly.”
The youngest doctor in the group is Aviram Hochstat, who is nearing his 26th birthday and will be assigned to one of the IDF’s infantry battalions. Hochstat told Yedioth Ahronoth that while he volunteered at Magen David Adom as a teen, he never thought of going into medicine. He said that the biggest challenge in the process of becoming an IDF doctor is the first years, since they are mostly theoretic in nature.
“Afterward it became much more interesting, we took courses, we worked in a hospital,” said Hochstat. “Over time I realized I wanted to be a doctor in the battalion. I think that despite the young age, these studies make you very mature. When you make decisions that can affect whether a person lives or dies, it makes you a more sensible adult, so I am convinced that I will succeed in my job.”
The Medical Corps noted that a small decline in the number of IDF doctors is expected in the years 2013 and 2014, but the numbers are expected to rise again in 2015 when the first graduates of the IDF’s medical school which opened two years ago at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University complete their studies.