[PUBLIC MEDICINE AND RESEARCH-- IMPORTANT AND CHALLENGING]

Fellows who travel to the US are familiar with the American concept of combining clinical medicine and research. Research activity enforces reading, being updated, thinking creatively initiating, opening horizons, and being in contact with researchers all over the world. Thus, performing research is advantageous not only for research itself, the public, the patients and the knowledge, but also for the development of the researcher, the hospital, and the academic institute with which the hospital is affiliated. However, given the huge clinical workload and obligations, along with the shortage of physicians, the time consuming nature of research activity and the difficulties in obtaining research funds, it is certainly not obvious that clinicians can manage to conduct research and publish it. Decision makers, policy determinants and the individual drive to academic progress, encourage research activity by physicians, albeit the external support is commonly theoretical and moral, and is not commonly combined with time or appropriate resource allocation. In the current issue of "Harefuah", physicians from the Lady Davis Carmel Medical Center publish their own research and review articles. The hospital is the second largest in the Haifa region, providing services to a population of over a million people. The manuscripts reflect only a small sample of the research and clinical activities of the hospital.