Dr. Amitai Ziv

Jewish Values

“Pirkei Avot states, ‘He in whom learning from mistakes overrides wisdom, his wisdom will endure.’ This is the inspiring core of why I developed MSR: to encourage errors in a safe environment, so that healthcare professionals can provide exceptional patient care.”

Global Impact

The Israel Center for Medical Simulation (MSR) is revolutionizing learning for healthcare providers worldwide by exposing trainees from all healthcare professions to challenging clinical and humanistic encounters in immersive simulated medical environments. To date, the organization has trained more than 200,000 healthcare professionals in more than 60 national programs and regularly assists medical centers, universities, and other health institutions around the globe—including Africa, the Far East, North and South America, and Europe—to integrate simulation-based training and testing into their programs.

Biography

Professor Amitai Ziv, M.D., M.H.A. is changing the face of medical education by transforming the healthcare patient-safety culture and improving the quality and effectiveness of patient care through the innovative use of simulation-based training. Professor Ziv is the Founder and Director of the Israel Center for Medical Simulation and Deputy Director of Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer, where he is responsible for Patient Safety and Quality Care. He is Acting Director of Sheba’s Rehabilitation Hospital and also serves as the Associate Dean for Medical Education at Sheba Medical Center.

Influenced by his training as a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force, Professor Ziv has become a world leader in applying simulation-based educational methods to improve the clinical competence, communication skills, and judgment of healthcare professionals—training them to apply better practices for their patients, enhancing teamwork, improving responses in emergency settings and extracting invaluable lessons from past errors. He has inspired his peers throughout the world to work together in creating new training models that reduce medical errors and provide a safer, more ethical, patient-centered medical culture, contributing to saving untold lives in the process.

Ziv is involved in many humanitarian initiatives and has developed national training programs in collaboration with other social and medical organizations. Including the Israel Defense Force (IDF) Medical Corps’, preparation for battlefield conditions as well as the training of health professionals to better diagnose and manage domestic abuse cases and improve their skills in dealing with end-of-life challenges such as conveying difficult news to patients and families. He has received national and international awards including the Charles Bronfman Prize in 2007 and the 2007 Michener Honorary Diploma of Health Science Award for Leadership in Applied Health Sciences. in 2011 Ziv was selected as an Ashoka Fellow for his exceptional work in health around the globe. In 2015 he received The Presidential Citation Award on behalf of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) in recognition of his significant contributions for quality and patient safety through the use of simulations and his advancement of the science through his leadership, scholarship and mentorship. In 2017, he was chosen to be a Fellow in the Academy of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

Professor Ziv has served as a consultant for the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates International Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) programs in Israel, Spain, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Italy, and the U.S. He served on the founding editorial board of The Journal of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH). He is also past chair of the Credentialing, Accreditation, Technology, and Standards (CATS) Committee of the SSH. He served as a member of two World Health Organization (WHO) Patient Safety Alliance expert working groups on Medical School Patient Safety Curriculum and on Patient Safety Technology. Ziv is a Clinical Professor at the Tel Aviv University Sackler Medical School and holds an Adjunct Associate Professor position at the Mayo Clinic (Medical Education) and at Case Western Reserve University (Pediatrics).

Ziv received his M.D. from the Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical Center of Jerusalem where he also completed his pediatric residency. He also completed a Fellowship in Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a master’s degree in Health Administration from Tel-Aviv University. He lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.