A study on student‘s perception of community oriented learning in community medicine dept clinical posting

Pravin N Yerpude; Keerti S Jogdand

Volume : IV, Issue : IX, September - 2015

A study on student‘s perception of community oriented learning in community medicine dept clinical posting

Pravin N Yerpude, Keerti S Jogdand

Abstract :

Introduction: Community oriented education is an important strategy to train undergraduate medical students for understanding health care needs of the community and for delivering health care services. This training enables students to relate theoretical knowledge to practical training in a primary care context. This method of teaching and training of medical students has been recognized at various levels. This activity provides students ample opportunities to interact with people of different socioeconomic class to understand their problems as well as needs. The present study was conducted to assess the level of satisfaction gained by students through community oriented learning and to study students semester preference for community oriented learning. Materials and methods: This is a cross–sectional study was based on feedback taken from 93 students of IV semester posted in Community Medicine department during their clinical posting. These students were divided into four batches during the period of four months from Feuary 2011 to May 2011.Each batch was divided into groups with two students in each group. With the help of predesigned questionnaire students conducted a family health survey in field practice area of Urban Health Training Center of Dept of Community Medicine which is in Guntur. Results: A total of 69% students rated their level of satisfaction for the project as good to excellent and 9% felt that it was satisfactory. 63 % students rated the level of community exposure as good to excellent followed by 21% who rated it as satisfactory.81% students felt that this survey should be a routine part of their curriculum and 48% students preferred VI semester is the ideal semester for doing this work; 43% were not ready for extension of the same survey. Conclusion: .Understanding the community while communicating with people was the unique task for students rather than routine classroom teaching in the college or in a hospital which has made students to understand Community Medicine thoroughly.Thus community based learning helped in sensitizing the young medical undergraduates to thecommunity health problems.