Abstract

Many a scheme is hatched at Association of British Neurologists’ meetings. A short conversation in the autumn of 2001 and our teaching trip was arranged. The increasingly difficult situation on the ground had meant a dwindling faculty at the fledgling Palestinian medical school. Yet the first graduates had been, by all accounts including those of external examiners, of high calibre. Hope was turning into the promise that the hand-picked students would become established home grown doctors, with knowledge of local needs and challenges, motivated and able to deliver and develop quality health care. Yet those early hard earned successes were already threatened. Full-time external faculty members, needed to supplement local expertise, were increasingly more difficult to recruit and retain. A temporary solution was to seek external short-term teachers.

Thus, we set off in June 2002, with the intention of teaching neurology to the first year clinical students on their general