Strengthening public health education of undergraduate medical students through early primary healthcare services’ association

Authors

  • Arwa M. El Shafei Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3592-6172
  • Mona I. El Lawindi Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20203059

Keywords:

Public health education, Medical students, Early clinical exposure, Integrated teaching

Abstract

Background: The World Health Organization consultation paper on the teaching of community medicine 2010 highlighted the need to change the focus from didactic lectures to more interactive teaching learning methods. The objective of this study was detection of difference between didactic and early training at primary healthcare centers at different levels of knowledge, acquired skills, and attitudes of undergraduate medical students.

Methods: This interventional study included students of academic year 2017-18 had summer training course in public health department as a part of the Faculty aim of early clinical exposure of preclinical students (i.e., first three grades) (n=25). The public health training course focuses mainly on raising students' skills of basic primary health care services. Comparable group of 75 students from the regular system were randomly selected. This intervention aimed to design new educational process and determine its outcomes evaluating Learner’s knowledge, their attitudes, and gained skilled.

Results: The interventional group had positive attitudes ranging from 59-93% for different topics given. The conventional methods group had statistically insignificant higher scores in the summative assessment 20.5±2.2 versus 19.6±3.1 of the interventional group (p value 0.11). The acquired skills of the interventional group ranged from 9.3±2.1 to14.9±1.5.

Conclusions: Early field contact gained higher positive attitude among medical students and it showed high skill acquisition. It is recommended to be used more frequently in public health practical teaching for undergraduate students.

 

References

Thomas KK. Cultivating Hygiene as a Science: The Welch-Rose Report's Influence at Johns Hopkins and Beyond. Am J Epidemiol. 2016;183(5):345-54.

Improving the teaching of public health at undergraduate level in medical schools - Suggested guidelines. New Delhi: World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia; 2010. Available at: http://apps.searo.who.int/PDS_DOCS/

B4674.pdf. Accessed on 17 March 2019

Ruis A, Golden R. The schism between medical and public health education: a historical perspective. Acad Med. 2008;83(12):1153-7.

Petrakova A, Sadana R. Problems and progress in public health education. Bull World Health Organ. 2007;(85):963-5.

Pearson D, Lucas B. Engagement and opportunity in clinical learning: findings from a case study in primary care. Med Teacher. 2011;33(12):670-7.

Srikanth S, Thirunaaukarasu, Behera BK, Mahajan P. Modular teaching: An alternative to routine teaching method for undergraduate medical students. Indian J Community Med. 2011;36:237-8.

Widyandana D, Majoor G, Scherpbier A. Pre-clinical students' experiences in early clerkships after skills training partly offered in primary health care centers: a qualitative study from Indonesia. BMC Medical Education. 2012;12(1):35.

Schapiro R, Becker SA, Foertsch J, Remington P, Seibert C. Integrative cases for preclinical medical students. Am J Prev Med. 2011;41(4-3):187-92.

Rhodes M, Ashcroft R, Atun R, Freeman G, Jamrozik K. Teaching evidence-based medicine to undergraduate medical students: a course integrating ethics, audit, management and clinical epidemiology. Med Teach. 2006;4:313-7.

Mash B, DeVilliers M. Community-based training in family medicine a different paradigm. Med Education. 1999;33(10):725-9.

Woodruff JN. Accounting for complexity in medical education: a model of adaptive behaviour in medicine. Med Educ. 2019;53:861-73.

Widyandana D, Majoor G, Scherpbier A. Effects of partial substitution of pre-clinical skills training by attachments to primary health care centers: an experimental study. Med Teacher. 2011;33(6):313-7.

Frank J, Snell L, Cate O, Holmboe E, Carraccio C, Swing S, et al. Competency-based medical education: Theory to practice. Med Teach. 2010;32:638-45.

Bossche VDP, Gijbels D, Dochy F. Does problem-based learning educate problem solvers? a meta-analysis on the effects of problem-based learning. Newport Beach, CA: VII EDINEB Conference; 2000.

Albanese M, Mitchell S. Problem-based learning: a review of literature on its outcomes and implementation issues. Acad Med. 1993;68(1):52-8.

Norman G. Research in medical education: three decades of progress. BMJ. 2002;324(7353):1560-2.

Karthikeyan K, Kumar A. Integrated modular teaching in dermatology for undergraduate students: A novel approach. Indian Dermatol Online J. 2014;5(3):266-70.

Schmidt H, Bongaerts MM, Hermans H, Cate TT, Venekamp R, Boshuizen H. The development of diagnostic competence: comparison of a problem-based, an integrated, and a conventional medical curriculum. Acad Med. 1996;71(6):658-64.

Hamilton J. Training for skills. Med Edu. 1995;29(1);83-7.

Koo K, Lapp I. Educating the next generation of physicians in public health: the MPH for medical students. Public Health Rep. 2014;129(5):460-4.

Mise J. Impatience of health professions students for health equity: can a new definition help. J Public Health Policy. 2014;35:411-3.

Peters S, Clarebout G, Diemers A. Enhancing the connection between the classroom and the clinical workplace: A systematic review. Perspect Med Educ. 2017;6(3):148-57.

Downloads

Published

2020-07-24

How to Cite

El Shafei, A. M., & El Lawindi, M. I. (2020). Strengthening public health education of undergraduate medical students through early primary healthcare services’ association. International Journal Of Community Medicine And Public Health, 7(8), 2979–2984. https://doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20203059

Issue

Section

Original Research Articles