In Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, a medical school offering a fully accredited four-year program based on a U.S. curriculum has been established through a long-standing partnership with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. This program at Nazarbayev University School of Medicine (NUSOM) is the sole graduate-level MD program in Central Asia, where students usually enter medical school directly after high school. In April, a regional agency recognized by the World Federation for Medical Education granted full accreditation to NUSOM's MD program.
“We are absolutely delighted with this achievement”, said Nazarbayev University Dean Massimo Pignatelli, “and we are extremely grateful to the team from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine because they’ve been involved in this project from the beginning as our strategic partner”. For the past 12 years, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Pitt Med) has served as the strategic partner of Nazarbayev University (NU) in establishing its medical school. The goal has been to educate physician-scientists who will become leaders in health care, medical education, and biomedical research in the Central Asian nation.
Getting a school accredited is “a rather rigorous bar”, said Michael Elnicki, Pitt’s director of medical student assessment and professor in the Department of Medicine. It typically takes at least seven years (including three graduating classes) to get an initial three-year accreditation. “Most schools usually don’t have their ducks in a row the first go-round”. Pitt collaborated with physician-educators from Kazakhstan and worldwide on various aspects, including curriculum development for the medical school, creating policies and procedures, designing teaching facilities, and hiring and training faculty and administrators.
“A lot of universities have started campuses in other parts of the world, but I think starting a medical school is probably the most challenging”, said Pitt’s Saleem Khan, associate dean for graduate studies and academic affairs and professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. While other top-tier U.S. universities like Brown, Cornell, and Duke have established medical schools in other countries, Pitt responded to a request from Nazarbayev University in 2012 to assist in establishing a medical school.
“After a thorough analysis that we took up through the provost and then-Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, we made the decision that we would submit a proposal. We thought it helps to build our international footprint”, said McDonald, who served with Pitt Med Vice Dean Emerita Ann E. Thompson as a co-principal investigator of the project. Pitt was selected.
The collaboration extends beyond medical education programs. At the request of Nazarbayev University (NU), Pitt’s School of Nursing assisted in establishing a professional development program for nurses, offering RN, RN to BSN, and four-year BSN degree programs. Subsequently, UPMC established residency training programs for the School of Medicine and its academic medical center in Kazakhstan. Of the partnership, McDonald says, “it was a matter of working in an area that was not resource-poor, but know-how poor, because all of medical education was still on a highly didactic model, not entirely based on current, evidence-based knowledge and care”.
