Medical Volunteerism in Undergraduate Medical Programme: A Novel, in-depth Curriculum

Adegoke Olusegun Adefolalu

doi:10.24018/ejmed.2020.2.2.195

Abstract

Health disparities persist among several populations globally and doctors are well-placed to advocate for better health outcomes among the population they serve thereby promoting health equity. According to the literature, medical educators have the capacity to produce socially responsible medical doctors who have competency in health advocacy in addition to their clinical knowledge. However, apart from being taught the determinants of health, little, or no real-live experience is given to medical students in social medicine and health advocacy to enable them to develop the necessary skills in this area. At the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in Pretoria, South Africa, Medical Volunteerism was offered as a selective course during the 2016 academic year. It entails engagement of the medical students in activities that tied them with the primary burden of providing service to an identified community, where they plan and participate in an organized activity that meets the identified needs of such community. This article describes the structure, content, and outcomes of this curriculum. The feedback from students and other stakeholders were strongly positive, the students rated the course highly in a variety of instances, including appropriateness of lecture topics, presentation of the course contents, course materials, effectiveness of teaching and level of students' participation. The average overall rating for the course was 8.4 based on a ten-point scale. Furthermore, the students acknowledged that it contributed to their personal development in terms of social activism in health. In conclusion, medical volunteerism selective has positive impact that is measurable, support should be given to students and facilitators who are interested in implementing similar selective as it has the potential of reinforcing certain values in medical students that could motivate them to have increased desire to work with underserved communities after graduation.

Highlights

Widespread inequalities and health disparities persist in many populations, and often a times, these are intricately linked with various socio-economic and political factors peculiar to the population in question
The medical volunteerism selective described in this article provide information about the organization, implementation and outcome of the selective course which is valuable to other medical schools that are trying to create selective courses
Because medical students received credits for the activities done during the medical volunteerism selective, technically they are not regarded as 'true volunteers' but they function as such from the perspective of the designer of the medical curriculum

Summary

Introduction

Widespread inequalities and health disparities persist in many populations, and often a times, these are intricately linked with various socio-economic and political factors peculiar to the population in question. The objectives of this article are to describe the organizational features of the medical volunteerism selective offered at SMU; to describe the unique experience of the author with the assessment of medical students during this selective, and to outline the structure of the selective in a way that might serve to assist other schools in the development of similar selective It is the opinion of the author that offering medical students an opportunity to function as medical volunteers is good for their medical training and is an effective way to influence their career decisions, leading to an increased desire to work with underserved populations and a higher likelihood of choosing a carrier in primary care medicine [3]

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion