Researcher and bioethics and law consultant at the King Fahd Specialized Hospital in Dammam, Dr. Reem Al-Shinawi, returned to her home country to place her education and knowledge in the service of the Kingdom.
She obtained her master’s and Ph.D. degrees in healthcare ethics and medical laws and fellowship specialized in leading COVID-19-related crises, and the safety of patients, to serve her nation amid the coronavirus’ unprecedented circumstances, and to become one of the Kingdom’s healthcare heroes.
The Royal University of Ireland awarded her a master’s degree in the ethical and legal issues of organ donation after cardiac arrest in 2011. Following that, Al-Shinawi worked for free for a year at Dammam’s King Fahd Specialized Hospital.
Al-Shinawi was then granted a scholarship to the US, and spent seven years there.  During her stay she was selected to join the bioethics fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. She was then selected to join a three-year post-doctoral fellowship and training program at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
Al-Shinawi said that she dedicated her doctoral dissertation to study the privacy laws related to genomics and protection of genomic data, in which she criticized US federal law related to genomic health data privacy, as the importance of privacy laws in genetic information lies in protecting national cybersecurity.
She said: “My journey in the US has helped strengthen my confidence and my sense of responsibility after I had acquired the knowledge to be able to help establish the norms of this rare specialty in the Kingdom.
“The bioethics and medical law promotes excellence in the performance of health facilities, where it focuses on establishing a sustainability system that ensures the safety and rights of patients, and achieves health efficiency.”