Joel Grunhut1, Shimron Brown1, Peter Averkiou2
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/ijms.2021.939
Volume 9, Number 1: 75-76
Received 01 02 2021: Rev-request 06 02 2021: Rev-request 04 03 2021: Rev-recd 08 02 2021: Rev-recd 25 03 2021: Accepted 09 04 2021
The current healthcare environment obliges medical schools to include a principle of community partnership within a medical education. This should provide medical students the skills to practice in a rapidly changing health environment.1 Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, medical schools were challenged with providing community engaged learning to their students.2,3 Service learning, a learning experience that combines community service with preparation, planning, engagement, and reflection, is an example of the community-engaged learning that faced these challenges during the pandemic.4 Service learning is a required activity at our medical school and fits well with the mission of our school, which includes advancing the well-being and health of our community through patient-centered care. Our school aims to train excellent clinicians who are compassionate and will serve as advocates for their communities.
The middle school where we performed our service learning was like most other schools in the country this fall. In August, the school announced its plan to roll out a virtual curriculum. However, a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders experienced a curriculum that was quite different. Twice a week, these students met virtually with two medical students and experienced what it meant to be a professional healthcare worker. We implemented a theme of “Training to Live as a Healthy Professional” - a play on words to teach the students about being a “professional of being healthy”, and also to serve as an exposure to healthcare as a profession. We hoped to encourage the students to living healthy and to give them the tools to enter a healthcare profession. Many of the students are from underserved communities and never considered this profession as an option.
We structured our time to focus on “training to think like medical professionals”, with interactive scenarios to understand clinical reasoning, integrating valuable nutritional and exercise lessons, and included a session on approaching the challenges of telemedicine.
This infusion into the virtual curriculum provided a great opportunity for the students to interact and learn through an exciting medium. Previously, others have reported that learning through an online platform may present challenges with interaction and stimulation.5 We aimed to avoid these challenges through question-provoking lessons, quiz contests, and role playing. The lessons learned also resonated with the children and showed them a bright promise for their futures. In a time when the pandemic presented many challenges, these students gained valuable opportunities, lifelong lessons, and new friendships.
Working with these students allowed us to take a step back from learning about the medical field and instead, teach about it. The students showed us that it is never too early to begin understanding the basics of biology and to be introduced to its real-world clinical implications such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and rare genetic diseases. We found that teaching, even such young minds, gave us a chance to practice communication with those that have not been learning medicine daily - a glimpse of what the future holds for us. The importance of medical students teaching children and thus sharpening teaching skills has been emphasized by others previously.6 We similarly felt that this experience allowed us to assume a teaching role that will aide us in the future and improve our overall clinical and mentoring capabilities.
We came out of this experience with renewed enthusiasm towards involvement in the community. We want to impart the idea that once we are doctors, we should ensure that our patients feel comfortable to participate in discussions regarding their health and medical diagnoses, and most importantly, to remember that as doctors we will also be teachers. At a time when medical disease and treatments are at the forefront of every conversation, educating our children, patients, and communities is of the utmost importance.
None
The Authors have no funding, financial relationships or conflicts of interest to disclose.
Conceptualization: JG, SB, PA. Data Curation: JG, SB, PA. Formal Analysis: JG, SB, PA. Funding Acquisition: JG, SB, PA. Investigation: JG, SB, PA. Methodology: JG, SB, PA. Project Administration: JG, SB, PA. Resources: JG, SB, PA. Software: JG, SB, PA. Supervision: JG, SB, PA. Validation: JG, SB, PA. Visualization: JG, SB, PA. Writing – Original Draft Preparation: JG, SB, PA. Writing – Review & Editing: JG, SB, PA.
1. Hunt JB, Bonham C, Jones L. Understanding the goals of service learning and community-based medical education: a systematic review. Acad Med. 2011 Feb;86(2):246–51.
2. Tsima BM, Masupe T, Setlhare V. Service-learning in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic: Emerging lessons from the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Botswana. African J Prim Heal Care Fam Med. 2020 Jun;12(1):e1–3.
3. Correa TL, Guelli MSTC. Telemedicine Volunteering Experience as a Medical Student During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil. Int J Med Students. 2021 Jan–Apr;9(1):71–2.
4. Prakash N, Grunhut J, Howard H. Is Community-engaged Learning Possible During a Pandemic: A Call for Culturally Competent Medical Education. MedEdPublish. 2020;9(1):1–8.
5. Thomas A, Shenoy MT, Shenoy KT, Suresh Kuma S, Sidheeque A, Khovidh C, et al. Survey Among Medical Students During COVID-19 Lockdown: The Online Class Dilemma. Int J Med Students. 2020 May–Aug;8(2):102–6.
6. Cline L, Canales M. From Student to Teacher: Medical Student Perceptions of Teaching Children and a Novel Application of the One Minute Preceptor. Int J Med Students. 2020;8(3):245–50.
Joel Grunhut, 1 BS. Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine Florida Atlantic University, USA
Shimron Brown, 1 BS. Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine Florida Atlantic University, USA
Peter Averkiou, 2 MD. Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine Florida Atlantic University, USA
About the Author: Joel Grunhut is an MS2 at Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.
Correspondence: Joel Grunhut, Address: 777 Glades Road BC-71, Boca Raton, FL 33431, United States. Email: jgrunhut2019@health.fau.edu
Editor: Francisco J. Bonilla-Escobar Student Editors: Leah Komer Student Editors: Duha Shellah Copyeditor: Ciara Egan Proofreader: Adam Urback Layout Editor: Judie Joo
Copyright © 2021 Joel Grunhut, Shimron Brown, Peter Averkiou
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
International Journal of Medical Students, VOLUME 9, NUMBER 1, April 2021