Surrey Visiting Scholar wins Avicenna Award and is tasked with furthering patients’ rights in Iran
Wednesday 19 March 2008
Dr Soodabeh Joolaee, a 2007 Visiting Scholar at the University of Surrey, has been awarded one of three Avicenna Awards for the best PhD dissertations in the past year at the Iran University of Medical Sciences. The subject of her study, which was conducted at Surrey and in her home country, was patients' rights in Iran.
Dr Joolaee has now also been asked by the Iranian Minister of Health to oversee the implementation of patients' rights policies and dissemination of knowledge in the country.
The Avicenna Awards are named after Avicenna, a famous physician in the 14th century whose writings has huge impact over the entire then-known world.
Dr Joolaee comments:
"Overseeing the implantation of patients’ rights policies will be a huge job, but my stay at the University of Surrey enabled me to learn a great deal on how to use and develop policies and teaching material. I can honestly say that staying at Surrey as a Visiting Scholar was a wonderful experience for me. All the staff were completely accepting of me, particularly my mentor Dr Verena Tschudin, whose supportive ethical manner played an important role in directing me and supporting my efforts in the fields of teaching-learning, researching and writing on ethics. I have since translated one of her books on nursing ethics into Farsi and it will soon be published together with another book I have written concerning patients rights."
Dr Soodabeh Joolaee’s mentor at the University of Surrey Dr Verena Tschudin adds:
"I am delighted to hear of Dr Joolaee’s success in her home country and proud to see how the work performed at Surrey can influence patients’ rights policies throughout the world."
