Abstract
Nepal is a low-income, landlocked country located on the Indian subcontinent between China and India. The challenge of finding human resources for rural community health care settings is not unique to Nepal. In spite of the challenges, the health sector has made significant improvement in national health indices over the past half century. However, in terms of access to and quality of health services and impact, there remains a gross urban-rural disparity. The Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS) has adopted a community-based education model, termed “community based learning and education" (CBLE), as one of the principal strategies and pedagogic methods. This method is linked to the PAHS mission of improving rural health in Nepal by training medical students through real-life experience in rural areas and developing a positive attitude among its graduates towards working in rural areas.This article outlines the PAHS approach of ruralizing the academy, which aligns with the concept of community engagement in health professional education. We describe how PAHS has embedded medical education in rural community settings, encouraging the learning context to be rural, fostering opportunities for community and peripheral health workers to participate in teaching-learning as well as evaluation of medical students, and involving community people in curriculum design and implementation.
Highlights
Nepal is a low-income, landlocked country located on the Indian subcontinent between China and India
We describe how Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS) has embedded medical education in rural community settings, encouraging the learning context to be rural, fostering opportunities for community and peripheral health workers to participate in teaching-learning as well as evaluation of medical students, and involving community people in curriculum design and implementation
As graduates from PAHS move forward into careers as physicians, one key marker of the success of PAHS in advocating for rural primary health care will be the willingness of government to post graduates in the communities they have pledged to serve
Summary
Nepal is a low-income, landlocked country located on the Indian subcontinent between China and India. Such experiential learning opportunities are expected to help graduates obtain a firm grasp of concepts and principles of preventive health and social determinants of health while developing the necessary skills in management, epidemiology and research. PAHS has adopted CBLE both as the experiential strategy for preparing medical graduates for work in rural communities and as a pedagogical approach It locates medical education in community context and helps infiltrate the academic process with a solid understanding of rural health needs. Efforts are made to ensure that each VDC has the capacity to host the students, make use of information gathered and support the projects in which students engage while in the community
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
