Community based project work as a teaching tool: Students' perception

Abstract

The medical college in general has the social accountability to produce a doctor who will take care of the health needs of the masses and not of the privileged few. It is up to the medical colleges to address this problem seriously and suggest measures.(1) Community-based training will enable students to understand the needs of communities and relate theoretical knowledge to practical training in a primary care context. This method of teaching and training the medical students has been recognized at various levels.(2) The MCI curriculum, revised in 1997, has increased teaching learning hours in Community Medicine to emphasize community-based learning. Accordingly, a medical student has a 2½ month practical posting (forenoon-3 hours/day) in community medicine.(3) Per these guidelines, the department of Community Medicine of Bharati Vidyapeeth University Medical College (BVUMC), Pune gives community-based observational and/or interventional projects to fourth and sixth semester undergraduate medical students during their practical posting. These projects thus provided these students ample opportunities to interact with various sections of society. This article discusses the feedback of these students on community-based projects with the objectives of assessing the students’ perception about community exposure and the level of satisfaction during community-based projects, assessing the type of study and term preferred by the students for doing projects, assessing their preference for the extension of the same project for more than one semester, and to study the strengths and weaknesses of the projects as perceived by the students.