Investor’s Gift Expands Medical Education in Israel
Investor’s Gift Expands Medical Education in Israel
September 26, 2011
The Wall Street Journal — The 53-year-old real estate investor and owner of BLDG Management, recently gave $2.5 million to Ben-Gurion University to establish a medical simulation center.
The center will help to train future doctors and nurses on sophisticated dummies that simulate childbirth, bleeding, breathing, trauma and other medical emergencies.
“If our mission at the medical school is to train world-class physicians and improve health care of the Negev at same time, it’s an important part of education,” says Mr. Goldman of the center.
Mr. Goldman is first vice president of the American Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His gift follows several others made through a family foundation named after his parents, Joyce and Irving Goldman. The university’s medical school is named in their honor.
Mr. Goldman’s service on the executive board of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System first gave him the idea to seed the simulation center at Ben-Gurion. North Shore has a similar center, where Mr. Goldman learned about training techniques—from the simplest things like taking blood to teaching nurses and doctors to communicate better in an emergency room.
The dummies, which cost more than $20,000 apiece, are programmed to respond like humans and the simulation room is intended to resemble a hospital environment Research. The training gives medical workers the opportunity to practice before ever touching a patient.
As part of his board service, Mr. Goldman performed a simulated angiogram at North Shore-LIJ. “My patient survived, but it probably took me a lot longer than it should,” he jokes.
Mr. Goldman says that some might not understand the need for such a center. “But then you start getting into much more complicated equipment, especially with modern technology … and it becomes very interesting,” he says.
Mr. Goldman’s philanthropic interests are primarily in education and health care, including areas like providing healthy school lunches. In considering gifts, he and his siblings evaluate what is responsible giving, what is beneficial to society and also what his parents—both low-key in their philanthropy—might have supported.
Still, there are differences to Mr. Goldman’s philanthropy. Where his father was inclined to give to help long-term—the teach a man to fish philosophy—Mr. Goldman says that he weighs that out with support that might help immediately. “The world is a lot kinder and softer and you do have to provide Band-Aids every so often,” he says.
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