Premature deployment caused unqualified Egyptian army doctors to forget their training

Evidence

More important than the language problems was the habit of appointing the early graduates of the Abū-Za‘bal School as regimental doctors and attaching them to the army in Syria before they had received enough training in the school. Time constraints meant that these students were discharged from school and sent to field service before they had completed their proper training courses. On being sent to active duty they “neglected the medical books they had studied and never went back to consult them. Since they knew that they no longer had to sit for exams, they had no recourse to these books … They thus forgot whatever they had learned.” Occasionally, having been proven to be unqualified to deal with the various cases they had to face in Syria, these young graduates were charged with incompetence and sent back to Egypt to finish their studies. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1128

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how widespread was this pattern of premature graduation across other schools (military engineers, surgeons) serving the Syrian campaign?