BAHRAIN'S future doctors and nurses graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland-Medical University of Bahrain (RCSI-Bahrain) in Busaiteen yesterday.

The event was held under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa and was attended by Deputy Premier Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa.

A total of 208 graduates from postgraduate and undergraduate courses were conferred with degrees in the presence of president Professor Thomas Collins, government officials, parliamentarians, regional and overseas diplomats, RCSI-Bahrain staff members, parents and students.

They included 64 School of Medicine graduates, 77 School of Nursing graduates, 33 Masters graduates, from both nursing and medicine, and 34 Leadership Institute graduates.

Among them were 28 MSc nursing students who were the first to receive these qualifications within the GCC.

Speeches were given by both undergraduate schools valedictorians Talal Hilal and Maysa Al Rumaihi, while Prof Collins addressed the graduates for the final time.

"You will not only be the health professionals of the future in the countries in which you will live and work, you will be the best educated, best paid and most influential professional groups in any country in which you work," said Prof Collins.

"This places a heavy responsibility on you.

"As nurses and doctors you are not engineers who work on the machine of the human body - you must rather work out of the moral purpose of doing good.

"It is impossible to conceptualise a good nurse or a good doctor as one who is emotionally disengaged from the moral project of enhancing human health and human welfare and of challenging any factors in the wider environment which in any way damages or depletes human health and welfare.

"As idealistic, value-driven and critically-thinking professionals you will bring energy, clarity, expertise and social purpose to the professions which you are today graduating into."