Voluntary community service in medical school: a qualitative study on obstacles faced by student leaders and potential solutions

Abstract

PurposeIn medical school, students may participate in various community involvement projects (CIP), which serve disadvantaged communities. However, several obstacles may arise during these projects. The authors conducted a qualitative study with the primary aim of understanding the obstacles and corresponding potential solutions when medical students in Singapore participate in local CIP (LCIP) and overseas CIP (OCIP).DesignThe authors recruited medical students from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, who were also leaders of a specific community service project done in medical school. Twelve one-to-one interviews were held for the participants from 6 to 8 January 2013. Participants were led in a discussion based on an interview guide. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed into free-flow text. Subsequently, content and thematic analyses of the transcripts were performed independently by three researchers.ResultsThe medical students faced many common obstacles during their community service projects. These obstacles include difficulties in recruiting and managing volunteers, attaining recognition or credibility for the project to acquire funding and resources, adjusting to a different culture or language, setting goals, and facing project-specific obstacles. Potential solutions were offered for some obstacles, such as building a strong executive committee for the project, grooming successive batches of leaders, and improving the project's public image, mentorship, reflections, and sustainability plans.ConclusionsMentorship, reflections, and sustainability are potential solutions that have been proposed to tackle the obstacles faced during community service participation in medical school. However, there may still be difficulty in solving some of the problems even after these measures are put into practice. Future research may focus on evaluating the effectiveness of these suggested solutions.

Building Community and Medical School Partnerships: Impact on Undergraduate Medical Education and Research

“…Common challenges faced by our students include comforting and communicating professionally, working independently, organizational issues, lack of resources and ethical issues. Similar to our ndings, studies have listed CSL challenges including language and cultural barriers or potential to harm the patient (34,40). A similar potential negative effect from the same study included creation of dependencies of local communities on the local clinic or at the level of government policies and health insurance (40).…”

“…Similar to ours, another CSL model describes the effectiveness of such programs in developing the participants self-reported empathy, cultural competence, communication skills and openness towards peer teaching (3,31). Peer learning and support, which is another important nding of our study, has also been described by researchers as enhancing medical knowledge, procedural skills (32) along with the professional development of all students involved in such interactions (5,33,34). While developing a culture of community outreach, CSL programs similar to ours, have also shown improvement in student attitudes towards patients (35) and development of social accountability (36)(37)(38)(39).…”

“…A similar potential negative effect from the same study included creation of dependencies of local communities on the local clinic or at the level of government policies and health insurance (40). Funding has also been a crucial factor for sustainability of such projects (34). The CSL project at SMU was fully funded by SMU and supported by local organization (Cayman Heart Fund).…”

Exploring Factors That Influence Student Engagement in Community-Engaged Learning Activities Within a Pharmacy Context

“…Our findings are consistent with Clark et al (2015), which reported that the most common barriers for students working with community partners during the community service-learning program were scheduling difficulties and, in some cases, a lack of clarity of the students' roles. 1 The barriers specific to voluntary CEL activities included challenges in managing logistics and volunteers, which paralleled the phenomenological study conducted by Loh et al (2015). 26 Medical students who…”

Swachh Bharat Summer Internship Programme: An Opportunity of Community Based Service Learning Practice for Medical Students in India

“…6 Study has shown that this kind of service learning process builds and refines someone's team based skills; improve mental maturity of the students to resolve obstacles etc. 12 Positive feedback by the students has opened the door for similar kind of service and learning activity for future. Model of community service and learning should be encouraged more among the MBBS students by celebrating different national health days in the community and in these activity different models of health education [e.g.…”