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Welcome to CBP
Community Partnerships Program (CPP) to Community Based Practice
Program (CBP); Why change the name?
The new medical
curriculum at Monash
University has been
running since 2002. Integral to the
second year curriculum has been the Community Partnership Program (CPP) and the
Health Promotion and Knowledge Management (HPKM) program. These have been run separately but
concurrently. To maximise synergies,
educational objectives and administrative efficiencies these two programs have
been combined into the Community Based Practice Program (CBP). This integrates these two components in Year
2 of the medical curriculum (Theme I and Theme II respectively).
Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery Course
(MBBS)
The medical course,
Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), is a five-year undergraduate
medical course. The curriculum seeks the development of doctors who understand
that health and disease is not just a matter of individual patients but of
their families, their communities, and societies in general. The course is structured on 4 themes of;
Theme 1: Personal and Professional Development
Theme 2: Population, Society, Health and
Illness
Theme 3: Foundations of Medicine
Theme 4: Clinical Skills
Subjects are taught
within these four integrated themes vertically across the five years by
interdisciplinary faculty staff with a range of content expertise. In the early
years, the basic medical sciences are taught in the context of their relevance
to patient care and society. This
foundation is reinforced later in the course by clinical teaching. An emphasis on clinical communication skills
and early clinical contact visits to medical practices, community care
facilities and hospitals is a feature of the medical course. All students spend significant time in
community and rural areas as part of a health care team.
Accordingly the Faculty
of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences seeks to produce graduates who are;
concerned with issues of
equity, quality and humanity in health care,
able to act as an
advocate for people who are disadvantaged and dispossessed,
able to demonstrate
awareness of the social, ethical, economic and environmental context of health
and illness, psychological well-being and delivery of care,
committed to the health of
populations as well as individuals, and
capable of addressing key
questions relevant to the community and to medicine.
While these attributes
will be addressed in various teaching and learning activities across the entire
curriculum, it is in the Community Based Practice (CBP) Program that students
have a specific opportunity to explore community responses to social justice
issues; reflect upon their own attitudes and behaviours; and relate these to an
evolving understanding of the relationship between medicine, medical
professionalism and social justice. The CBP program requires students to
consider their own knowledge, values and skills in relation to the impact of
political, social, and economic determinants on people’s lives. It will allow students to better understand
the use of contemporary approaches in service delivery, and it will also serve
as an opportunity to explore alternative strategies to health and well-being of
their patients in their future medical practice.
Community Based Practice Program & the MBBS Curriculum
The Community Based
Practice Program is an integral part of the MBBS curriculum. It is implemented
in Year 2 of the medical curriculum. The MBBS Year 2 program integrates
material from all Themes. The primary vehicle for integration remains the
weekly Patient Centred Learning (PCL) session.
In this small group discussion session, students focus on a
patient-centred ‘case’ which comprises integrated elements from the week’s
study, and builds upon knowledge and skills already learned. Individual Theme content in Year 2 is as
follows:
Theme 1: Community Based Practice Program
Theme 2: Health Promotion and Knowledge
Management
Theme 3: Homeostasis: Maintaining the Internal
Environment
Theme 4: Clinical Skills
The CBP program provides
students with an opportunity to gain a unique learning experience off campus,
based within a community organisation involved in the provision of clinical,
health and social care to individuals who have diverse needs. Practical involvement with their
community-based placement provides an opportunity for students to understand
what these organisations do, why they need to do so and how they serve
individuals, families and communities.
This community-centred approach to medicine will allow medical students
to experience health and social care issues at a grassroots level.
The Theme 2 components of
Health Promotion (HP) and Knowledge Management (KM) are incorporated within
this program. They introduce the students to the concept and process of health
promotion in current medical and community settings. They expose the students
to policy making, program development, implementation and evaluation, the
practice of self-care, patient education, behavioural and attitudinal change,
health enhancement as well as health protection.
The HPKM projects with their didactic and experiential
components are essential elements in gaining an understanding of the importance
of health promotion and how it is actually carried out ‘in the field’.
Knowledge Management will guide the students in developing and focusing their
project ideas, as well as gathering, managing, and assessing evidence and
information on their topic of interest. The students will develop skills in
communicating their project work orally, visually, and in written form to
fellow students, faculty, and the community groups or organisations with whom
they will be working. The generic knowledge and skills gained through the
lectures and workshops, as well as through readings will be applied in the real
world during the conduct of these projects.
CBP Learning
Goals and Objectives
CBP is integrated across the four curriculum
themes in Year 2. It is aimed to help
students develop as professionals, as individuals and understand the
distribution and determinants of health.
Further it will help students to understand and apply health promotion
concepts. The CBP also aims to
facilitate the acquisition of knowledge about the effects on health of being
disadvantaged and to develop skills while working in the community. These are
summarised as below:
Develop an interprofessional perspective on
issues of social equity, justice, and model(s) of health interventions in the
community.
- Understand
the “whole person”, and in particular the social and economic context of health
and illness;
- Appreciate
the interplay of medical, scientific, social, cultural, political, economic and
ethical factors in health promotion;
- Define,
compare and contrast medical, behavioural, and socio environmental approaches
to health promotion;
- Develop
knowledge of barriers faced by people in accessing services, their relevance to
medicine and individuals health;
- Develop
an understanding of social and public policy and how it impacts on individuals
health;
- Develop
an appreciation of how and why community organisations deliver their services;
- Develop
an understanding of the different strategies and methodologies that can be used
in healthcare delivery and research, and develop skills through practical
application of these methodologies;
- Understand
and participate in the basic HP process of program development, planning,
implementation, and evaluation;
- Apply
critical appraisal skills to clinical and research literature;
- Articulate
the relationships between data, information, evidence, knowledge and informed
care;
- Apply
a range of knowledge based systems in clinical practice;
- To
develop skills in communicating the project outcomes to an audience by
different methods;
- To
develop skills in teamwork.
Medicine and
Social Justice through
Community Based Practice Partnerships
It is long known that
social and economic injustice produces inequities in health status. However, our current society treats them as
problems to be managed rather than addressing their root causes. The World
Health Organisation (1946) defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not
merely the absence of disease, or infirmity’. Complementing this approach
is the Charter on Medical Professionalism (2002) which identifies three
fundamental principles which guide the medical profession: the principle of the
primacy of patients’ welfare; the principle of patients’ autonomy; and the
principle of social justice.
Implicit in this approach
is recognition that every human being has a unique dignity irrespective of
nationality, ethnicity, social and economic status, gender, sexual preference,
age beliefs, or contribution to society, and that each society has an
obligation to pursue social justice, to protect its members from harm and to
provide equitable benefits for all.
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