The Students and the programmes
The Department of Community Medicine starts its teaching to medical undergraduates in their 3rd year with the introduction of clinical teaching. Community Medicine curriculum consist of different field programmes and institutional activities.
The Community Attachment Programme
Once the students complete their 2nd MBBS examination an orientation course is conducted which include two weeks of introductory lectures in Community Medicine and one week of field experience in the introductory lectures. The basics of public health is generally covered with a special emphasis on the community attachment programme of the Community Medicine Curriculum. During the community attachment programme the students are divided in to small groups and a cluster of families are assigned to them for long term follow up for holistic care that will extend to their final year to practice social paediatrics.
During the 1st week of field visit the students are expected to do a survey on assigned families to find their health, social and environmental problems and workout the plan of action for next two years.
Community Medicine lecture start in their 6th term their course and continue till the 11th term.
The introduction to the research project is carried out during the lectures and a special workshop is organized during the vacation time to develop the hands on experience on computer skills. Students are expected to develop their research protocols with the help of staff members and engage with their research activities of their own.
The evaluation of the community attachment has been planned to do every three months interval from this year. This kind of an evaluation was not followed earlier. It was introduced to the 28th batch of students this year to ascertain the quality of work the students perform in the community.
This quarterly evaluation will be performed in the form of presentation by students and field visits by the staff. Three different components of the community attachment will be assessed at these evaluations. Students are expected to submit a complete comprehensive report including demographic data, problems identified and the actions taken to over come the problems at the end of the attachment. This report is assessed by two examiners and there is a viva voce examination at the end in conjunction with the department of Paediatrics.
The community attachment always lead the students to develop multi disciplinary approach to the problems and to develop intersectoral collaboration in solving them.
Research project starts in their 3rd year as mentioned earlier after the training workshop and students perform the research in groups. The groups are being supervised officially by one senior academic member of the department to keep up with the uniformity.
Research report will be submitted to the department in the latter part of the 4th year and will be assessed by two examiners. There is a viva voce examination for research project before the 3rd MBBS Part II examination.
The Department of Community Medicine expect the students develop different levels of knowledge skills and attitudes such as understanding the use of different research methods, handling data, being methodical and being explorative by doing the research.
The didactic lectures on the different topics of Community Medicine starts at the 3rd year (from the 6th term) on following subjects.
5. Occupational Health
6. Maternal and Child Health
7. Environmental Health
8. Behavioural Science
At the end of each course of lectures a continuous assessment test is conducted and the marks are added to the main part II examination.
Community medicine tutorials are performed in the 11th term. Tutorial are compulsory for the students. The department has organized small group tutorials with pre prepared model answers. All staff members are provided with model answers and they prepare for the discussions with the model answers. Another objective of this type of preparation is to make all staff members to get familiarized with all subjects taught in community medicine irrespective to their field of specialty. This process was started from this year. An evaluation of this learning module will be done at the end of this term for the 26th batch.
The Clerkship Appointment
The clerkship appointment is similar to a clinical appointment in teaching clinical medicine. The public health aspects taught in the faculty is practically experienced in the community by the students during the clerkship appointment. It starts in the 4th year. The students are sent to the community for four weeks period to cover up different public health institutions and personnel to learn and understand the provision of primary health care services to the community. They are expected to learn different dimensions of PHC applicable to promotion of Health and Prevention of diseases.
Their appointment is well structured and students are provided with working objectives in the community at different places (vide the work book for medical students).
Student are expected to fill up the answers for all objectives given in the guideline book and submit at the final end presentation.
A seminar is conducted by students at the end of the clerkship appointment where each student will participate actively in the seminar and assessed by the staff as a formative assessment.
An objectively structured practical examination (COPE) is conducted at the end of the clerkship appointment to assess their over all practical knowledge gained through clerkship appointment. The marks obtained are added to the main examination.
The guideline book is given back to the students to keep it as a reference in their future references.
Self evaluation of the clerkship programme is performed at the OSPE for each group of students and measures are taken rectify the deficiencies.
1. Field services materials Eg:- B.P. apparatus, Weighting scales, Skin fold calipers, stethoscope, Snellen charts, Height measuring scales.
2. Community Medicine Resource Centre with all information materials such as lectures, handouts, past papers, information leaflets, posters, journals and books with computer facilities.
3. Facilities for small group tutorials.
Computer Assisted Learning Material on CD Rom on Bio-statistics
i. Hypothesis testing.
ii. Chi-square test.
v. Distribution of the difference of two samples.
vi. Sampling methods.
viii. Z Test.