Community-oriented medical education in Glasgow: developing a community diagnosis exercise

Objectives Recent NHS changes have included an increasing emphasis on prima ry care settings, and hence community needs assessment. This has led to sug gestions that medical education should become more community-oriented if to day's medical students are to become effective medical practitioners. Recen t curriculum reforms in a number of medical schools frequently involve a mo re student-centred approach, which encourages students to learn by intellec tual discovery and critical thinking. We describe one such exercise in comm unity diagnosis that has been developed in Glasgow's new undergraduate medi cal curriculum. Design The exercise has been developed as three teaching sessions, each wit h specific learning objectives. The first session explores the strengths an d weaknesses of routine statistics, and reveals the lack of information reg arding individual's and community's health and health care needs. The secon d session is a community-based rapid participatory appraisal arranged by ge neral practitioners. Students interview patients, carers, and local key inf ormants and health care professionals about their perceptions of health and health needs. In the final campus-based session, students combine and pres ent their findings. Development included two pilot exercises involving deta iled evaluation. Setting University of Glasgow. Subjects Medical students. Results Students valued the contrasting perspectives and information provid ed by different sources. After completing the three sessions, most students and tutors considered it an interesting, enjoyable and educational experie nce. Conclusions This innovative community-oriented teaching programme gave stud ents some insight into how health, morbidity and mortality are measured, wh y these might vary between different communities, and how different communi ty members' perspectives might differ regarding perceived health and social needs.