Mark Bernstein
Appointed to the
Greg Wilkins Barrick
Chair in International
Surgery
Mark Bernstein with Vera Wilkins and Peter Munk (from left to right)
A $5.5 million gift from the Barrick Gold Corporation
and Vera Wilkins will insure a legacy of education and
care based on the pioneering work that Mark Bernstein
has done to encourage improvement in neurosurgical
treatment in developing countries (see also http://www.surgicalspotlight.ca/Article.aspx? ver=Summer_2010&f=BernsteinGhana).
The Barrick Gold Corporation, the largest gold mining
corporation in the world, has 26 operating mines in
many countries. The company has decided to honor the
memory of Greg Wilkins, their charismatic and highly
effective Chief Executive Officer. He is described by his
friends as highly intelligent, adventuresome (he was a
Grand-AM auto racer), humble and fiercely loyal. He
had taken the company to great heights during his tenure
as CEO. Greg died from a glioblastoma multiforme
at age 53. The Greg Wilkins-Barrick Chair was planned
as his legacy. It will perpetuate his memory and celebrate
his accomplishments.
Mark’s vision of the Chair is to improve neurosurgical health care delivery in developing nations, to decrease
inequities, to enhance engagement and understanding
between healthcare providers in developed and developing
countries, and to advance the general well-being of
developing nations, specifically in the domain of healthcare.
This mission will be accomplished by enhancing
the access and quality of neurosurgical care - by empowering
their surgeons, nurses, anesthetists and other
healthcare providers through hands-on education inside
and outside the operating room in their local environment
and in Toronto. Mark’s specific aims include:
Support of scholarships for surgeons, nurses, anesthetists and other healthcare providers from developing nations
to visit and observe neurosurgical care at Toronto
Western Hospital, and to provide salary support for neurosurgeons
from developing nations to obtain additional
specialty training in neuro-oncology as Fellows at TWH.
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Support of travel costs for the Chair holder and other
members of the team for missions to teach neurosurgery,
nursing and surgical ethics in distant lands, and to
recruit students and residents to participate in international
surgery by visiting developing nations.
Support for research to assess the impact and
sustainability of the teaching program, support the Chair holder
and his/her designate to present lectures at international
meetings, support video conferencing, tele-teaching,
internet-based teaching in developing centers, and support
visiting professorships and academic symposia
based on international surgical education.
The Chair will add countries where the Barrick Corporation has mines to Mark Bernstein’s already productive international
teaching program. For example, a recent Barrick
outreach scholar, Mariam Al-Rashid is an international
neurosurgery observer from Saudi Arabia. Mark will travel
to Zambia, a country he has not yet visited, but an important
part of the Barrick program, to assess and advance
neurosurgery capacity there. He will continue to fulfill his
mandate in other countries, in addition to those of interest
to the corporation, such as his Nigeria mission where he
will bring two nurses, an anesthetist, a resident and a qualitative researcher for his next visit.
Supported by the Chair, students will be enabled to
participate in these missions, and a Global Health
Professional Masters degree in International Surgery
will be funded. George Ibrahim, a current neurosurgery
resident will be the first to enter this graduate program.
George teaches the ethics module on informed consent
to the 3rd year medical students, accompanied by Mark
Bernstein. Mark is developing a model of teaching ethics
through and with residents, a well established model of
education in clinical surgery. The international chair will
bring students and neurosurgery residents with Mark
to assure that a legacy of international Neurosurgery
is established. An important theme of the program is
enculturating residents and students to inspire them to
sustain the program. There is an axiom often quoted in
our bioethics centre to describe the importance of teaching
moral reasoning in addition to providing answers to
ethical dilemmas: “If you give a man a fish, you feed him
for a day, if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life”.
Embodying the transgenerational theme of the Barrick-
Wilkins Chair, Mark adds: “If you teach a man to teach
his son to fish, you can help feed a community for life.”
M.M.
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