Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Community and Occupational Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Cairo, Al- Azhar University, Egypt.
2
Community and Occupational Medicine Department, Faculty of medicine for Girls, Cairo Al-Azhar University, Egypt.
3
Community and Occupational Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Cairo, Al-Azhar University, Egypt.
4
Public Health and Community Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University, Ismailia Egypt
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Background: Community medicine teaching has a vital role in graduation of community oriented primary health care physicians, who can identify and solve health problems in their community.However, the majority of undergraduate medical students perceived it as irrelevant to their role as physicians and not prefer it as a future career. Integration in medical curricula makes the learning and teaching to occur in a holistic way that reflects the real world, so it may be perceived better by students and staff members.
Objectives: To investigate the perception of undergraduate medical students towards community medicine teaching process and their future career preference, to identify the perception of teaching staff about the community medicine educational process in traditional and integrated medical schools.
Participants and Methods: a cross sectional study, conducted on 600 randomly chosen undergraduate students (300 from each system), and 110 community medicine teaching staff members at some faculties of medicine in Egypt (68 from traditional system and 42 from integrated system). Data were collected by self-administered pre-tested questionnaires using Likert-scale.
Results: The mean age of participant students was 21.8 year±0.8, while the mean age of participant staff members was >40 years, and the majorities of both were females. The median of total scores was low in both groups, while it was significantly higher among the participants from integrated versus traditional schools (students score was 58.5 versus 51) and (staff score was 79.5 versus 74) respectively. Only 12% among studied students preferred community medicine as a future career, 53.5% among them were highly satisfied by community medicine course.
Conclusions: Perceptions regarding the community medicine educational process was better among the integrated system participants than traditional ones. The majorities of students in both systems did not prefer community medicine as a future career.
Keywords
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