ROME: a tool to train under graduate medical students as community health care providers

Abstract

Background: Re-Orientation of Medical Education (ROME) program is relatively a new teaching and learning method for undergraduate medical students which enables them to achieve the knowledge and skills to provide effective community health care. Objective of this study was to find out which of the various activities that were carried out during the ROME posting helped them to achieve the required knowledge and skills to provide effective Community Health Care.Methods: A descriptive study was conducted among 101 undergraduate MBBS students who participated in the ROME posting under the Department of Community Medicine of a medical college in Puducherry. Predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used to get the feedback regarding the various teaching-learning methods applied during this ROME posting which was carried out for one full month and about various activities that were carried out by the students such as clinical examination, data collection, data entry and analysis, development of IEC materials and their administration, organizing medical camps, maintaining drug inventory, sanitation campaign and report writing under the supervision of Intern, PG and faculty.Results: “Learning through performing individual tasks” was the most popular teaching-learning method. “Conducting survey” and “data entry” were the most sought after activities by the students.Conclusions: ROME posting helps in motivating undergraduate medical students to apply the principles of comprehensive approach towards various medical problems and thereby fulfill the ultimate aim of creating efficient Community Health Care Providers.

Assessment of Smartphone Medical Applications as a Self-Directed Learning Tool for Medical Students and Compulsory Rotatory Residential Internship—A KAP Survey

“… 10 , 11 In Pondicherry and other states of India, other important mobile apps were used namely Epicollect5 and ROME as SDL tools for UG medical graduates. 4 , 17 – 20 In our study, 46% of students use smartphone apps at least once a day which is similar to other studies. 1 , 2 , 6 , 7 , 11 The students who have submitted their responses said that they found it to be very easy to install and user-friendly, during the research.…”

Learning by doing: Smartphone app in undergraduate medical students' research

“…[ 9 ] Many studies have shown that if education is research oriented and field based, students will not only gain knowledge but also learn the clinical skills and research methodology. [ 10 11 ] During the re-orientation of medical education (ROME)[ 12 13 14 15 ] posting of undergraduate medical students in the Department of Community Medicine, a field-based activity was planned and data were collected by the students using a smartphone app under the guidance of faculty and postgraduate students. Keeping the importance of students’ feedback in mind, the current study was planned with an objective to understand the students’ perception on using smartphone app as a tool for data collection in the field of community research.…”