Stella Major, MBBS, FRCGP, CHSE
Stella Major obtained her MBBS in 1990 from the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical school and is an alumna of the Imperial College School of Medicine and Technology, London. She is a board-certified family physician (MRCGP-UK) and retains her license to practice as a general practitioner with the General Medical Council in the UK. In 2011 she was awarded fellowship by her college (FRCGP) in recognition of her extensive contribution to general practice education, leadership and scholarship both in the UK and internationally.
Between 1995 and 2006, Stella served as a full-time faculty member at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Upon returning to the UK she became deputy director of primary care education at the department of primary care and social medicine, where from she remains an honorary senior lecturer. In 2009, she moved to Abu Dhabi as a senior faculty member at the United Arab Emirates University, College of Medicine and in 2013 joined Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar, in the rank of associate professor of family medicine.
She has held numerous senior administrative leadership positions within undergraduate medical education (UGME) and represents WCM-Q on the QU-Health Interprofessional Education Committee. She is a certified simulation educator (CHSE) and a member of SESAM’s (Society in Europe for Simulation applied to medicine) SimU group.
As the director of the clinical skills and simulation center (CSSL) at WCM-Q she strives to integrate best practices in simulation-based education (SBE) into the UGME and supports and promotes faculty development. Between 2015-2017, she and her team worked on upgrading, expanding and diversifying the various simulation-based educational modalities to best suit the integrated curriculum. The center celebrated its grand re-opening in 2017 which saw with it the inaugural annual simulation based educational symposium. She is the director of this annual event, hosted at WCM-Q, which strives to promote standards of best practice and build collaboration across the health professions educators and providers in Qatar. Prominent speakers from Australia, Europe, USA and the MENA region have addressed diverse themes which were identified as the needs of the Qatar community. These include interprofessional education, debriefing with good judgement, institutional culture and readiness for simulation-based education, and psychological safety and the promotion of resilience during the COVID pandemic.
For many years, Stella has served as an external examiner for the MRCGP International CSA (clinical skills assessment) licensing examination in Dubai, Oman and Kuwait, and is a recipient of numerous awards for Excellence in Clinical Teaching and Curriculum Innovations.
Her research interests are varied and are heavily influenced by her observations of contextual cultural nuances. Of note, she examined the prevalence of self-medication and adverse drug reactions leading to hospitalization in Lebanon; uncovered the experience of pregnancy loss among women in Qatar and the UK; explored global migration and life experiences from the perspective of health educators and trainees; and studied the teaching of communication skills to medical students. Her latest area of interest is the integration of technology into medical education for which she has been awarded a medical education research grant to equip a Virtual Reality (VR) suite in the CSSL, to explore how VR may impact communication skills and learners’ perceptions of empathy.
Her latest publication describes how virtual patient encounters (Web-OSCEs) can be conducted using Zoom, and has prompted her to establish and lead a bi-campus elective for medical students in telemedicine, in collaboration with faculty from WCM-Q and WCM’s Center for Virtual Care in New York.
Updated bibliography: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1h9kjuqzhfp5GW/bibliography/public/