S.F. doc helps Israelis train in U.S.

When there was a lack of physicians in Israel, American doctors went to help. Nowadays, however, the best way to help the Jewish state is to bring Israeli doctors here — to train.

As the medical field continues to grow in Israel to meet the demand, one organization has remained a cornerstone in helping develop specialized physicians. The nonprofit American Physicians Fellowship was created in 1950, and is dedicated to advancing medical education, research and health care in Israel.

Bay Area residents have long been involved. Dr. Paul Scherer, a member of the executive board and a San Francisco podiatrist, first became involved with APF in 1985. At that time, he said, the main concern was to maintain a list of physicians who would volunteer to go to Israel in the state of an emergency. This happened twice before, in 1967 and then in 1973.

But as things settled down in Israel, so did the goals of APF.

"By 1985, the secondary goal became more popular than the registry because it was basically a time of peace in Israel," Scherer said. This secondary goal was focused on bringing Israeli doctors to the states, and to have the fellows study in top medical programs across the United States for between six months to a year.

"One of the prides in American Jewry is that Jewish physicians had gone from a period of being excluded by an allotment to now being the heads of many departments," Scherer said. "We used that advantage to bring them here."

So, APF began offering fellowships and educating Israeli doctors, a move that eventually worked out better than planned.

"The fascinating part about the fellowship is that now a great many heads of the medical departments in Israel are past APF fellows," Scherer said. "It turns out it worked. Who knew?"

Fellows generally study in the United States for one year, bringing with them their family in hopes of learning more and bringing back their new expertise to Israel.

Shai Shefi is currently a fellow at the University of California in San Francisco. After completing his urology residency in Israel, he opted for UCSF because of its combination of clinical and academic excellence. He said it took him almost two years from the time he contacted the right person for APF, completed the interview process and was selected.

He said that he has gained a lot of "cutting edge knowledge and experience, both in clinical and research aspects of my fellowship. I've learned microsurgical techniques not possible to learn in Israel, and was part of highly advanced research."

The fellows are partially funded during their stay here, although the high cost of not only relocating to the United States but also affording to live in the expensive Bay Area has not been easy.

"The financial burden is a hardship that accompany us all during this period," Shefi said. "A fellow's salary is very modest, and even with the APF scholarship we had to take a significant loan to live in the Bay Area."

The tradeoff, however, will be that Shefi will return to Israel and be trained in both clinical and research aspects of andrology.

Oved Cohen, a fellow at UCLA's cardiothoracic surgery department, added that another hardship was the language and cultural barriers, but he too recognizes the rich experience he is gaining.

"I've learned a lot from what I've seen and practiced here. The variety of disease and possibility is much richer than what I was exposed to in Israel," he said.

Part of the goal of the program is to take the highly specialized medical fields taught in the United States and Canada, and try to meet the demand for patients in Israel. Today, Scherer said that there is an increased need for anesthesiologists.

When Scherer developed a podiatry program in Israel in the mid-1980s, he said that at that time, there was a need for foot doctors.

"Foot care was sort of falling through the cracks in Israel. At a time when type 2 diabetes was a national epidemic in Israel, and it has a primary pathology in the foot."

For Shefi, though he has gained experience and has had access to new types of research, he looks forward to returning to Israel and contributing to fulfilling medical needs.

And Scherer said that is just the point.

"The fellowship program provides access to the American academic medical community to Israeli physicians," Scherer said. "And that's huge."