Omsk State Medical University

Omsk State Medical University is one of the oldest universities of Siberia; it was founded in 1920 as the Medical Faculty of the Siberian Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Zoology which enrolled 186 students. In 1921, West Siberian State Medical Institute was established; and Prof. N.K. IVANOV-EMIN was assigned as the first rector. In 1924, it was renamed into Omsk State Medical Institute.

In autumn 1931, the Maternity and Child Protection Faculty was established which later was reorganized into the Pediatric Faculty. The Sanitary and Hygienic Faculty was founded in 1938 (now it is the Preventive Medicine Faculty). In 1957, he was admitted to the Dentistry Faculty. The fifth faculty established was the Faculty of Pharmacy which started to enroll students in 2002. In 1994, the Institute was granted the status of a State Medical Academy. On the 5^th of December 2011, Omsk Medical College was affiliated with Omsk State Medical Academy.  In 2015, the Academy was assigned the status of a University.

International activity in OSMU was launched in 1997 when the University became a full member of IFMSA (International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations), where Russia is represented by the National Union of Medical Students. In 2007 the National Union of Medical Students joined the International Association of Dental Students (IADS), which allowed Russian dental students to take part in international exchange programs. Every year, within IFMSA and bilateral agreements with partner universities, OSMU students do an internship in the leading foreign clinics. In our turn, we host foreign students in OSMU hospitals.

Since 2007 we started actively working with DAAD programs and in winter 2008 OSMU won a DAAD scholarship for a study tour to Germany for a group of 14 students for 2 weeks. The program of the study tour in Germany was extremely rich and included visits to higher educational institutions and major leading clinics:  Charité, Emergency Hospital, and Clinic for Oncohematology in Berlin; Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, and the Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine at the Dresden Technical University.  In April 2013 the second application was approved, and 15 students of OSMU got acquainted with university clinics in Bonn, Dusseldorf, and Bochum.

International School on Reproductive Health of Adolescents has become a brand of the University since 2015. The first School hosted twelve medical students from Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany). It was the first experience of such cooperation for both parties. The Second International Winter School 2016 Reproductive Health of Adolescents was traditionally held in February, the interest in which was also huge, and the participants expressed their warmest thanks for the high level of organization and relevance of the chosen subject, for the high professionalism of our lecturers, for the clinical cases and unique operations presented. The Third International Winter School 2018 welcomed students from different countries including Japan, Croatia, Israel, Germany, France, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

First Medical Schools allowed expanding the fields and target audience for the future Schools. Thus, in September 2018 the First International Autumn Linguistic School Professional Communication without Borders: Quo Vadis? for the teaching staff was held. And in July 2019 in conjunction with the Omsk State Agrarian University, the First International Summer School The Challenges of Functional Nutrition in the XXI Century: A Cross-Disciplinary Agro-Medical Approach was held. The aim of the School was to provide students from both agrarian and medical universities with state-of-art, cross-disciplinary knowledge in the field of organic food and functional nutrition.

Since April 2014 new agreements in healthcare, academic, scientific, and cultural cooperation between OSMU and Astana Medical University, Kazakh-Russian Medical University, Almaty, Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University, Almaty, the Republic of Kazakhstan, and B.N. Yeltsin Kyrgyz Russian Slavic University, the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, were signed.

In July 2015 OSMU joined the Association of Sino-Russian Medical Universities, aimed at the organization of international cooperation in academic, research, and medical activities. Due to this membership in October 2017, the Agreement with Xinjiang Medical University (China) was signed, and in February 2019 the delegation of Xinjiang Medical University visited OSMU to carry out a comparative study of the system of higher medical education in Russia and in China based on the examples of two universities followed by an idea for a joint research project (Russia – China) in the field of medical bioethics.

The beginning of 2017 was marked by a Cooperation Agreement on Dentistry between Omsk State Medical University and Rīga Stradiņš University and a new joint project with the University of Luxembourg on Parkinson’s disease.  

During 2018 – 2020 partnership relations have been strengthening and new agreements were signed: Oita University (Japan); Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany); University of Perugia (Italy); two agreements with medical universities of Belarus; an agreement with Nicolae Testemițanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy (Moldova); and two agreements with universities of Uzbekistan.

By 2020 OSMU has been implementing international cooperation in the framework of 24 agreements with universities of CIS and non-CIS countries.

In September 2014 the Center for Linguistics and Cross-Cultural Professional Communication was established as a sub-division of the International Affairs Department aimed to ensure life-long language learning in a medical university to integrate Russian medical specialists into European and world information and educational space.

The Center offers the following modules:

• General English
• Medical English for OSMU students with a native speaker
• English for Professional Communication (reading comprehension of medical literature, speaking, and listening)
• Medical English for Academic Purposes (participation in an international scientific conference).

International cooperation is strengthening to implement new plans, ideas and projects.