Students support and counseling
Students are provided with different forms of support. These include:
a. Accommodation for male students and for females
through hostels rented by the university. However, the university has a central university office to organize
b. Newly registered students are provided, in addition to the college student guide, with a manual of the first hundred or more of the medical terms to be encountered in the first few lectures in each of the subjects of the first year to help students overcoming the language barrier (Appendix 25). A meeting with the dean and college council members is also arranged for general advice and explanation . Senior students (3rd to 6th years) also talk to the new students to encourage them and explain to them the nature of the medical studies. A tour through the college departments, the clinical skills lab and the library is one of the activities the college perform on receiving the new students.
c. Psychological, social, financial and educational supports are offered by the student support bureau to all students who ask for consultation. The bureau was re-established in 2013. It is under supervision of four faculty members, one of them is a psychiatrist.
d. Educational and social counseling services is offered to the students through academic departments; each one of the teaching staff is
responsible for a group of students to advise and care for them and to listen to their problems.
e. Financial support is available to some students in need through the college deanery, through the student support bureau and directly
through donations from the teaching staff. Sixth year students receive a small monthly salary. The parliament has approved in late 2012 a law to grant all undergraduate and postgraduate students who are below a certain level of income a monthly grant of one hundred thousand Iraqi dinar.
f. Health care is offered free through the teaching hospitals and health care centers. Commonly used drugs and first aids are provided to
those in need through an emergency clinic established late in 2013 inside the college.