Impact of Service-Learning Paradigm on Demand Creation for Primary Health Care in the Rural Community

Abstract

Improving the quality of performance of Egyptian physicians in health services delivery requires the introduction of educational strategy that addresses population health issues through service-learning (SL) paradigm. Therefore, the Public Health Department- Cairo University (PHD-CU) has introduced a "hands-on"/Problem Based Learning module for the fifth year medical students.This module is aiming at building the capacity of the students to anticipate and respond to rural community needs and create demands for health care. Objectives of the study were to examine the impact of PHD-CU- service learning module on coverage of the rural families with health education messages, demand creation for primary health care services, and the utilization patterns of rural health unit (RHU) in the target village. A community-based evaluation study design was used. Cluster sampling technique was used and 1405 families were interviewed during household survey. Focus group discussions were conducted with rural health unit (RHU) staff members and community workers and RHU's service statistics were analyzed. Results showed that 87% of families were exposed to different forms of students’ SL activities, of which 61% were through home visits. About 91% of the home visited families have received health education especially for anti-smoking (58%), prevention of avian influenza (54%) and environmental sanitation (56%). Service statistics showed increase in different services e.g. Antenatal Care Coverage showed an increase by 32 percent points after students' visits. Rural health unit staff expressed appreciation to the students' role in demand creation for health care services.

Keywords

• service-learning
• medical students training
• problem-based learning (pbl)
• demand creation
• primary health care
• rural health unit
• health education