Early exposure to community service learning in the medical curriculum: A model for orientation week introduction

Abstract

Community service learning programs in pre-clerkship medical education are increasingly recognized as important in creating physicians who recognize the effects of one’s environment on their health and further strive to advocate for these patients to receive access to social programs that can improve their outcomes. The University of Ottawa Aesculapian Society recognized that an excellent method for providing early exposure to service opportunities in one’s new community is through Orientation Weeks. Prior to this year, no Orientation Week across Ontario had a philanthropy focus. Philanthropy in most students’ eyes refers to monetary donation. Understandably, Orientation Week directors continuously make the decision that asking medical students to donate money during the first week of one of many financially demanding yeas is unrealistic. Ottawa decided to incorporate philanthropy into our Orientation Week in the more inclusive form of community service, allowing students to donate their time, rather than donating their money. In addition to ensuring that philanthropy still has the opportunity to be a fundamental component of bonding during Medical School Orientation Weeks, as it does at the Undergraduate degree level, our initiative also served to facilitate early exposure to the various organizations students could complete their community service learning placements with later in their first year. Here we present our model, uO-Serves (“uOttawa-Serves”) of an Orientation Week philanthropy initiative of time-based community service in hopes that other Medical Schools will consider implementing a similar initiative within their Orientation Weeks