Community Medicine Techniques Every MBBS Student Should Master

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Community Medicine is a branch of science that deals with the general health of a community, a geographical region, or a nation. Community medicine plays a major role in a nation’s health policies.

Here are the goals that experts in Community Medicine are expected to achieve:

  • Prevent diseases
  • Make communities aware
  • Promote health and conscious lifestyle practices
  • Life improvement habits
  • Focus on treating groups

The following are the skills and community medicine techniques that an MBBS aspirant must acquire during their graduation days:

  • They must put in efforts to gather as much knowledge as possible about the group and community that are being served, the lifestyle struggles of the group, and the patterns of disease.
  • They must be good at handling large amounts of sample data, compiling it, and analyzing it.
  • They must have clear and proven insights into behavioral factors.

Challenges in Learning Community Medicine 

  1. Handling mammoth sample size: A community medicine aspirant has to deal with hundreds and thousands of samples, their results, and specimens. They need to derive data from it, narrow down the data, and arrive at insights that will help them administer treatment for the masses or individuals suffering from diseases. Community Medicine for Undergrads teaches a student to identify healthcare challenges, characteristics, or features of the disease, plan the administration of drugs, measure the results or implications of those on the community, and collaborate with specialists from other disciplines of medicine to plan better remedies for communicable and non-communicable diseases affecting the masses.
  1. Difficulty in surveys due to divergent healthcare practices: In developing countries like India, community-based participatory research becomes difficult as it is not always possible to survey the entire community or a group from a particular zone or state. In India, economic realities have cultivated divergent healthcare practices among the communities of a particular place. For example, if an individual is suffering from the common cold, the affluent section of society would opt for a consultation with a physician and the prescribed medicines. Whereas for the same problem, an individual from the marginalized section of society will resort to home remedies and ayurvedic practices. Incidents like this result in difficulty in balancing theory and practice for a physician.

3.      Ethical considerations: Places where the scope of community engagement is limited become a hurdle in the way of gaining data or conducting research. In rural parts of India, physicians have to take precautions when addressing sensitive topics and also adopt adequate measures to maintain ethical considerations while handling public health interventions. A good community medicine online course teaches them what to do and what not to do and guides them to keep up with cultural competence and shows them how to handle different situations related to communities with sensitivity.

Below are some techniques every MBBS student should know for learning community medicine.

  1. Focusing on the "must know" part, every concept or chapter has a few pointers that qualify under the "must know" category. MBBS students must identify this segment while attending community medicine video lectures, take notes, and even consult other books or online resources for in-depth information on this segment. The essential content will make a student confident and help them proceed to the "nice to know" category. 
  1. Practice the learning from classroom to community: Whatever an MBBS student is learning about community medicine, whether it is a new concept, a new model of treatment for the community, public health infrastructure, or the challenges in existing public health drives, an MBBS student should make regular field visits and interact with the communities. The observations and experiences from such a visit will further strengthen one's understanding and proficiency in community medicine. The student can start this practice with a family health survey, take special note of patterns of morbidity and diseases, lifestyle, needs, and problems, analyze the data, and perform specific diagnosis. 
  1. Adopt a smart learning strategy: An MBBS student with community medicine as one of the subjects must adopt a smart learning strategy from the beginning. The smart learning model includes the following steps:

a)      Attending medicine video lectures and strengthening one's knowledge base

b)      Discussing doubts with the faculty 

c)      Solving MCQs

d)      Discussing solutions for answers marked wrong

e)      Revise the concept regularly.

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