Sheba Medical Centre / Tel Aviv University Medical School

I arrived in Sheba hospital on 1/5/2022 and was shown around their expansive neuroscience department by Prof. Joab Chapman the head of the neurology department. He introduced me to their team of neurologists, who were all very welcoming and happy to have me shadow them.

Clinical exposure

My mentors during my stay in Sheba hospital were Dr Amir Dori (Neuromuscular disorders clinic and laboratory director), and Dr Shahar Shelly (neurology senior associate consultant). I sat in on their neuromuscular clinics and learned a lot by following their everyday practice. I participated the stroke team’s ward round and neuroradiology meetings, where I improved my understanding of stroke and its management.

Research experience

The majority of my time was spent working on a research project investigating the neurological toxicities associated with the use of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor drugs which have recently gained popularity in the treatment of cancer. I worked under Dr Shelly’s supervision; we analysed data from thousands of patients treated for melanoma at Sheba over the last 7 years and focused on the neurological adverse events which were caused by these treatments. We are currently working on a manuscript analysing our cohort and describing our findings, to be submitted to Neurology. 

An abstract summarising our work, titled “Age related prognosis and re-challenge in neurological complications of immune checkpoint inhibitors” by Jack Pepys, Shahar Shelly et al. was accepted for an oral presentation in the upcoming national conference of the Italian Neurological Society taking place in Milan in December 2022. 

It was a pleasure to learn from the great neurologists at Sheba Medical Centre and I am grateful to the Jewish Medical Association for helping me fund this brilliant opportunity. I was welcomed with open arms by the neurologists at Sheba, who were always available to teach me medicine, and about the life of medics in Israel. 

This experience definitely helped strengthen my resolve to become a practicing neurologist upon graduation and has taught me a lot about medicine in Israel as a possible future career destination.