Medical Education Overview on Community Oriented Medical Education
Community Oriented Medical Education (COME) describes the medical education curricula that are based on health issues pertaining to the community and trains the graduates to work in such communities (Worley 2001). In many instances, the COME courses can have a large portion of its training in secondary and tertiary care settings and a relatively smaller portion based on the community setting as well. Such community orientation can take place in many sites including,
Principles in community orientation
When discussing the principles of community orientation, the success of such a programme will depend on several key factors. These include,
Understanding the community:
As a health care professional, one must be able to understand the inherent behavior patterns of a specific community of people, their cultural values and norms, level of literacy and knowledge, ability to perceive things correctly as well as their own need for maintaining health. Once these characteristics are identified, it would be possible to plan out remedial action or else strengthen the existing practices in order to uplift the health indices of the community.
Developing communication skills:
In order to interact with a community of people it is vital for a doctor to inculcate effective communication skills. Thus, community oriented medical education will provide the ideal setting which will make sure the students will learn the need for such skills as well as learn in making use of them to achieve the objectives in relation to their curriculum.
Rapport building:
Unless the students build up a rapport with the community, it will be difficult to implement health promotion, disease prevention campaigns or even to implement action research. Thus, taking measures to develop a good rapport would be the corner stone in obtaining support from the community which would also determine the students performance as a physician working in the community.
Making a diagnosis in the community:
The knowledge acquired through class room learning would be put to best use while undergoing COME and this will enable a student to make appropriate referrals from the community as well as to detect disease patterns and therefore take action to remedy such issues as a health care provider.
Performing action research:
Action research involves the students to inquire and research into communities that they are assigned and come up with an action plan to improve the quality in aspects related to healthcare. Thus, such action research may be directed towards health promotion, prevention, curing and rehabilitation. Although health care is the primary focus, it may be in relation to improving financial stability, social interaction, family support…etc which will have an indirect effect on the health of its focus group as well as the community as a whole.
