Teaching community Oriented Primary Care in a traditional medical school: A two year progress report

Abstract

Efforts are being made to extend the practice of Community Oriented Primary Care by reorienting existing health services or restructuring medical education curricula. Nevertheless, changes in education must be simultaneous to changes in health services so that health professionals trained in COPC will find areas to practice COPC. The experience described in this article presents an effort in these two directions. A teaching program was introduced in a traditional medical school curriculum and was extended to six health services by training the directors of the health service as teaching instructors of COPC or closely coordinating actions with the director of the health service. The results of the program show fulfillment of learning objectives and student satisfaction with the program. Evaluations of the development of COPC in the health services involved show modifications in health programs to meet community needs and stronger community leadership and organization.

Improvements in CanMEDS competencies for medical students in an interdisciplinary and voluntary setting

“…This is obvious because the event concerned public health in our city, and our volunteers worked with health prevention innovatively to rethink it into a public event by transforming their theoretical knowledge into digestible health prevention initiatives. Local health advocacy has previously been successfully implemented in medical curricula, 31 but our results indicate that it is also achievable through extracurricular voluntarism. However, Stafford et al 12 reported a discrepancy between residents’ endorsement of this role and their participation in health advocacy.…”

Comprehensive Training of Community Diagnosis and the Community-Oriented Primary Health Care Model in Nursing Education

“…There are several examples of teaching COPHC among physicians or medical students, while these students are expected to practice the process of COPHC in a real community. [9][10][11] Among nursing students in Israel, the teaching format for community diagnosis is limited to several academic hours and that could be a reason for the scant literature on teaching community diagnosis using simulation. Thus, the challenge is to teach the subject while illustrating the meanings of community diagnosis as a basis for health promotion interventions in the community.…”

“…Community diagnosis is usually delivered as a structured lecture,8 while simulation of the process of community diagnosis is not a part of the curriculum of the nursing baccalaureate education and training. There are several examples of teaching COPHC among physicians or medical students, while these students are expected to practice the process of COPHC in a real community 9–11…”

Shifting Focus of Primary Health Care in the Context of Health Systems Reform in Resource Poor Settings

“…Four papers were reviewed on the adequacy of the medical education of doctors. The authors agreed that the traditional system of medical education did not prepare doctors adequately in developing countries for their expected leadership role in meeting the health needs for their communities through primary health care [49][50]. This is in spite of the acknowledgement and adoption of the Alma-Ata declaration by majority of the countries of the world as a strategy for achieving health for all [51].…”