Medical education is a system of training health care workers which ensures a study of general and specialized courses as well as mastering the necessary practical skills. The development of medical education is determined by the country's needs for health care providers and is of planned, state-regulated nature.
Medical education in Russia is provided by higher medical schools in the system of Public Health Ministry and the Ministry of Education and Science (46 higher educational establishments and Departments/Institutes of Medicine at classical Universities in the country) which comprise from one to five departments (General Medicine, Pediatrics, Public Health, Dentistry, Pharmaceutics). Many higher educational establishments are publicly funded national institutions. They accept individuals aged under 35, school leavers or those with a different higher educational background, or a diploma of a vocational college, who passed the entrance examinations.
The course of study is six years; junior students receive instruction in preclinical and theoretical courses (Anatomy, Histology, Physiology, Biology, Biochemistry, Physics, etc.). In the third year curricula begin to differentiate: students do specialized courses and general medical training whose content varies from department to department. Training in major clinical specialties like obstetrics and gynecology, therapy, surgery and the like is mostly offered in the fourth to sixth years; the teaching proceeds in clinics and hospitals under supervision of experienced teachers. Upon completion of the sixth year of study students take state final exams and are granted the status of doctors. After that, for two years of residency each doctor studies the chosen clinical specialty in depth, for instance, obstetrics and gynecology.