How to prepare for community medicine?

A few undergrad medical students consider Community Medicine a tough subject to crack. Community Medicine, also known as PSM is a really interesting subject provided a student has conceptual clarity in the subject. Students lose interest in Community Medicine topics mostly because they tend to forget facts and information. One is unable to relate concepts with recent incidents of mass illness, or they find the chapters in the textbook unappealing. Whereas in reality, Community Medicine- as an undergrad course is not only interesting but also scoring.

Community Medicineonline course can help an undergrad medical student explore more practical preparation techniques and practise with self-assessment questions. For instance, one of the effective prep techniques is collecting information about National health programs across the nations. Since nations emphasize diseases that have affected the masses, a student can gather much useful information about specific diseases. The only thing required to keep on reading volumes of case studies is patience. The essence of Community Medicine lies in extensive reading and frequent revision. Chapters of Community Medicine can be divided into communicable and non-communicable diseases. Each of these segments contains illness that affects diverse communities, symptoms, drugs, medical techniques, and precautions useful for the population.

Tips for preparing Community Medicine for undergrads

1.       To understand the public health priorities, including case studies from multiple sources.

2.       Along with regular lectures and practical sessions, one can subscribe to the best online community medicine courses available for a better understanding of the subject and analysis of case studies.

3.        Practise previous year's question papers: The question sets should include those from semesters, supplementary examinations, class tests, entrance tests for PG, etc. A student must go through them thoroughly to understand the patterns, and must also solve the question sets to gain speed and accuracy.

4.       Set a time limit for each chapter of your Community Medicine textbook. Also following a standard textbook on Community Medicine is recommended. The book authored by Dr. Bratati Banerjee has a concise format, consists of case studies in PSM from around the world, and also contains MCQs based on recent advancements.

5.       A Community Medicine online course provides the medico in-depth subject knowledge with concise lecture notes, mock test papers, and case studies.

The thumb rule for studying the concepts of Community Medicine is the fact that a medical aspirant must never be stressed while reading pages in a row. Since Community Medicine for undergrads is regarded as a demanding subject, hence, an aspirant must put in a lot of effort and patience. Attending a lecture first (online video lecture or classroom lecture) and then going through the chapters or concepts generates interest. That way there are least chances that a medical aspirant loses interest or track while studying Community Medicine. Another commonly practiced method is referring to multiple textbooks of Community Medicine simultaneously. This saves the medical aspirant from getting into the monotony of a text style, format presentations and information of a particular book. By referring to multiple books at once, an aspirant can gather more variety of information, case studies, sample questions, etc. which will greatly benefit his or her Community Medicine preparation. Right after learning a concept or chapter of Community Medicine, a medical aspirant must immediately look for relevant case studies, incidents around the world that have impacted mankind or similar kind of symptoms that have been recorded in the past. Bio stats, figures and observations of doctors around the world help aspirants have a better grasp of concepts.