The delivery of undergraduate clinical education in underserved areas is increasing in various contexts across the world in response to local workforce needs. A collective understanding of the impact of these placements is lacking. Previous reviews have often taken a positivist approach by only looking at outcome measures. This review addresses the question: What are the strengths and weaknesses for medical students and supervisors of community placements in underserved areas?
Health Workforce
This project serves as a model for skills training in rural areas in South Africa, and for collaboration between organisations. A number of specific recommendations are made for the future of this NNR training project, which offer lessons for similar programmes.
This paper reports on the physician’s perspective of Ecuador’s compulsory service program, known as medicatura rural.
The new Innovative Medical Curriculum (NIMC) is a four-year programme designed by the Ethiopian Federal Ministries of Health and Education. The curriculum is designed to train biomedical science graduates to become doctors in 4 years, with a focus on the healthcare needs of rural people living in poverty.
This paper evaluates the Programa Mais Medicos (More Doctors Program) in Brazil, estimating the increase in the number of doctors.
The Mexican mandatory year of social service following medical school, or pasantía, is designed to provide a safety net for the underserved. However, social service physicians (pasantes) are typically unpracticed, unsupervised, and unsupported. Significant demotivation, absenteeism, and underperformance typically plague the social service year. Compañeros en Salud (CES) aimed to create an education-support package to turn the pasantía into a transformative learning experience.
In China, rural healthcare systems have been neglected in favor of the development of market-driven, largely urban health information systems (HIS). The authors investigated the effective use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to develop a healthcare model within the rural healthcare system.
Studies demonstrate that the CME/CPD (continuing medical education/continuing professional development) needs of rural general practitioners (GPs) are unique. Little research has focused specifically on the effectiveness of CME/CPD programmes for rural practice. The aim of this paper was to review the literature on CME/CPD for GPs in rural areas, focussing on studies which examined impact on doctor performance or patient outcomes.
This study describes differences between the practice locations of Philippines medical graduates from two ‘socially accountable, community-engaged’ health professional education (SAHPE) schools and the practice locations of graduates from two ‘conventionally trained’ medical schools located in the same respective geographic regions.