Community- Based Education: Tikrit University College of Medicine Experience. PART ONE: Concept and Rationale of Community –Based Education.

Abstract

Tikrit University College of Medicine [TUCOM] is a community based college incorporating PBL and it is the first and only medical school in Iraq to introduce an innovative curriculum [1]. TUCOM/CBE programme constitutes a community based curriculum including an acceptable balance of community based activities through out of the educational settings [6 years of study] [2]. CBE is one of the most powerful and important teaching and learning strategy that allows students to study the sources, nature and magnitude of health and related problems [3]. In CBE, the community plays an important role in determining its own health needs, health problems and to overcome such problems. Furthermore, the students encouraged to learn from the community and assist them to attain their educational objectives [4]. Furthermore, well planning and well implementation of CBE are the important factors that driven the outcome of such innovative education method [5]. Recently, Worley [5] perform analysis of CBE and proposed a model for the key relationship in which student must be an active participant to facilitate high quality learning. He provided evidence for “the role of clinical, institutional, social and interpersonal relationships in providing a framework for describing quality in CBME curricula- the 4R model”