As a medical intern in Gaza, I have stepped out of the classroom and onto the front line
As Gaza entered its fourth month of the escalation of violence by Israeli forces, I was just a few months into my medical intern year—treating children with bomb blast injuries. In one case, I conducted the primary survey and inserted a chest tube on a child, but nurses couldn’t get intravenous access. They asked me to insert a central line, something I’d never done on a child so young. I hesitated, hoping for someone with more experience, but there was no one. Sadly, the child did not survive. As a medical intern, I should have been learning to provide care in controlled settings. Instead, I have been haunted by the many cases in which I did not have the training or resources to provide the care that was needed. In Palestine, a medical internship is a year-long training programme for doctors who have recently graduated from medical school. They rotate through various specialties under close supervision. With little clinical exposure, interns don’t hold a licence to practise medicine i
