A teaching hospital is a hospital or medical centre that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities and are often co-located with medical schools.
Teaching hospitals use a residency program to educate qualified physicians, podiatrists, dentists, and pharmacists who are receiving training after attaining the degree of MD, DPM, DDS, DMD, PharmD, DO, BDS, BDent, MBBS, MBChB, or BMed. Those that attend a teaching hospital or clinic would practice medicine under the direct or indirect supervision of a senior medical clinician registered in that specialty, such as an attending physician or consultant. The purpose of these residency programs is to create an environment where new doctors can learn to practice medicine in a safe setting which is supervised by physicians that provide both oversight and education.
History
The first teaching hospital where students were authorized to methodically practice on patients under the supervision of physicians was reportedly the Academy of Gundishapur in the Persian Empire during the Sassanid era. Some of the earliest teaching hospitals were the Islamic Bimaristans, which included the Al-Adudi Hospital founded in Baghdad in 981 and the Al-Fustat Hospital in Cairo founded in 872.