Today's Edition
SARA ALZAABI (ABU DHABI)
Around 120 doctors graduated from SEHA’s Postgraduate Medical Education and Training programmes 2026 on Thursday, including the inaugural cohorts of genetics and geriatric programmes, with Emirati phsyicians accounting for more than half of the graduates.
Abu Dhabi Health Services Company, SEHA is the largest healthcare network in the UAE. The graduation comes as the healthcare network expands training in specialised fields needed by the UAE.
The 2026 graduation ceremony in Abu Dhabi brought together residency and fellowship graduates from a wide range of medical and healthcare specialties across: Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC), Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Mohammed Medical City (STMC) and SEHA Clinics.
A key milestone was the first graduating cohorts in genetics and geriatric medicine.
Aletihad spoke to SEHA officials and graduates about the milestone and how medical training is meeting the UAE’s evolving healthcare needs.
Dr Bushra Qaed Ahmed, Corporate Clinical Education Manager, SEHA, said the introduction of specialised programmes is closely linked to areas where the healthcare system needs additional expertise and workforce capacity.
“This year, we have the graduation of the first cohorts from the genetics and geriatric medicine programmes. These are highly specialised fields, and this is the first cohort at the national level,” she said.
Genetics, she added, is becoming increasingly important as the UAE advances medical innovation and emerging technologies. Also, geriatric medicine responds to the need for specialised care tailored to older people.
“The country is always seeking medical development and advancement in genetics, innovation and AI, and genetics is an integral part of that,” Dr Bushra said.
She said SEHA identifies areas where there are shortages in medical expertise and develops training programmes that can help build the required workforce.
Decoding Genetic Variations
For Dr Mahra Al Fattan, graduating from the first cohort of the genetics fellowship programme marked a major milestone in her medical career. She said the establishment of the programme reflects the country’s ambition to remain at the forefront of medical education and emerging areas of healthcare, noting that similarly specialised programmes are not widely available internationally.
"Such programmes reflects the UAE’s ambition to remain a leader in education, medicine and postgraduate medical training." Her training also changed the way she understands disease, taking the investigation beyond a patient's symptoms to the genetic variations that may be responsible for them.
“DNA is a sequence of letters, and a small change, even in one letter can lead to major problems,” Dr Al Fattan said. For her, understanding how such minute genetic changes can have profound consequences also brought a more personal perspective to medicine.
"In our work, we are not only dealing with the patient, but also examining these genetic changes, or mutations, to understand the underlying cause of disease. This has taught me to appreciate the complexity of human biology and how even a very small genetic change can have a major impact."
Clinical Exposure
Dr Omar Jarrah, a paediatrics graduate, the four-year programme combined intensive clinical exposure with the independence needed to develop confidence as a physician.
“It is been a nice journey; four years filled with learning new things and acquiring new skills,” he told Aletihad. “It was not the easiest, but the people around me made it bearable and a really nice experience.”
That experience, Dr Jarrah said, allowed residents to connect what they studied with conditions they had already encountered in clinical practice.
Alongside clinical exposure, residents rotated through core areas and different subspecialties, with structured learning objectives, examinations, review courses and guidance from faculty members.
But one of the most important lessons, Dr Jarrah said, was learning when to act independently and when intervention may not be appropriate. “They taught us how to be competent. They taught us how to become safe physicians, when to know when we need to intervene and when not to,” he said.
For paediatricians, he said, the impact of that training ultimately extends beyond treating an individual child to helping build a healthier future generation.
“Our aim is to deliver the best healthcare for our children to grow, to become a very productive part of society,” he said.
