Medical education

Medical education [медична освіта; medychna osvita]. Prior to the end of the 18th century Ukrainian students wishing to pursue a medical career traveled to universities elsewhere in Europe, mostly to Italy, Germany, and Poland. They could also study in the Russian Empire at the Academy of Medicine and Surgery in Saint Petersburg or at the medical faculty of Moscow University (est 1764).

The first medical school in Ukraine was the Collegium Medicum, founded in Lviv in 1773. It was incorporated into the medical faculty (est 1784) of Lviv University in 1817; a medical faculty with a full complement of courses was established in 1894. With the installation of Soviet rule in 1939, this faculty was reorganized into the Lviv Medical Institute. The second school of medicine and surgery in Ukraine existed in Yelysavethrad in 1787–97. In 1802–17 a two-year medical program was offered at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy; its first lecturer was Opanas Maslovsky.

Systematic medical education in Ukraine began with the development of medical faculties at Kharkiv University (1805), Kyiv University (1841), Lviv University (1894), Odesa University (1900), and Katerynoslav University (1918, now Dnipro National University). By the middle of the 19th century numerous institutions had also been established for the training of nurses and medical assistants. The first faculty of medicine to use Ukrainian as the language of instruction was the Ukrainian State University of Kyiv in 1918, during the time of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. In 1921 a medical department with a two-year program was organized by Mariian Panchyshyn and Maksym Muzyka under the auspices of the Lviv (Underground) Ukrainian University; it lasted until 1925.

During the Soviet period a system of medical institutions of higher education was established in the Ukrainian SSR under the direction of the Ministry of Health of the USSR. In 1985 there were 14 medical institutes—the Lviv Medical Institute, Kharkiv Medical Institute, Kyiv Medical Institute, Odesa Medical Institute, Donetsk Medical Institute, Poltava Medical Stomatological Institute, Dnipropetrovsk Medical Institute, Ivano-Frankivsk Medical Institute, and the Zaporizhia (est 1921), Simferopol (1931), Vinnytsia (1932), Chernivtsi (1944), Luhansk (1956), and Ternopil (1957) medical institutes—as well as the Kharkiv Pharmaceutical Institute (1921), Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology (1934), and the medical faculty at Uzhhorod University.

The Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk institutes also had faculties of general hygiene and pediatrics. The Simferopol institute had a faculty of pediatrics; the Kyiv, Odesa, Poltava, and Lviv institutes had faculties of stomatology; and the Lviv institute has a faculty of pharmacology. Medical studies consist of a six-year program, and pharmacology and stomatology studies, a five-year program; postgraduate and specialization programs are also available. In the 1984–5 academic year over 56,000 students were enrolled at the various medical institutes. Degrees for the general practice of medicine were granted at all the medical institutes; specialization required another two years, and candidacy for a degree in medical sciences may take another three years of study. Postgraduate medical education in Ukraine was obtained at the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, and Kyiv (see Kyiv Institute for the Upgrading of Physicians) institutes for the upgrading of physicians. There was also a department of continuing medical education at the Lviv Medical Institute.

Intermediary medical personnel, such as medical assistants, obstetricians, laboratory technicians, nurses, dental technicians, X-ray technicians, and opticians, are trained at medical tekhnikums, where programs of study are two to three and a half years.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chistovich, Iakov. Istoriia pervykh meditsinskikh shkol v Rossii (Saint Petersburg 1883)
Petrov, Boris; Bratus, Vasilii; Duplenko, Konstantin (eds). Ocherki istorii meditsinskoi nauki i zdravookhraneniia na Ukraine (Kyiv 1954)
Grmek, Mirko. ‘The History of Medical Education in Russia,’ in The History of Medical Education, ed Charles O’Malley (Berkeley 1970)

Pavlo Pundii

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]