"My involvement with AHEC and with the CHIP program has helped shape a vision for the PCC projects," writes John Brill (MD, MPH), whose roles include Associate Professor - Family Medicine; Medical Director - Aurora School-Based Health Team; Director - UWSMPH Primary Care Clerkship; as well as serving on the Milwaukee AHEC Board of Directors.

Third-year medical students completing their rotation through primary care (family medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine) are now required to complete a community project. "The projects developed out of the transformation process to a School of Medicine and Public Health.," explains Dr. Brill. "We desired to add a curricular element that would require the students to think beyond the individual patients that they were seeing, to create something that would be useful to a broader population."

The focus on public health is a natural result; more surprising was the innovative approach to establishing the new curriculum. "A feature that I would like to emphasize is that students were involved in creating the options for the project and the evaluation process," Dr. Brill adds.

Students focus their project on the specific needs of the community and clinic where they are conducting their primary care clerkship. Under the guidance of the preceptor, the students identify a need and develop an appropriate project that results in a tangible product such as a handout, presentation, report, or column as well as an oral presentation which focuses on the community and process aspects of the project, not the medical issues. Recent project examples included creating a simplified patient education handout for insulin; submitting a letter to a local newspaper describing the benefits of its community health clinic, framed in the context of health care reform; and speaking to a fifth grade class about incorporating fitness activities into their lives to stay healthy.

Dr. Brill describes one of the benefits of the new curriculum. "I think that the most important outcome to date, and what I have heard over and over from the students, is that the projects have required them to think differently about the language they use for written and verbal communication. They have realized that they need to re-learn to communicate on different levels-- more visual, more simple, less jargon."

Undoubtedly, the PCC curriculum will continue to develop and evolve. Dr. Brill indicates that equitable evaluation of the projects remains one of the challenges across the various community sites. Another opportunity is the potential for collaborative work; in addition to strengthening skill in working in teams, collaboration would also foster different types of projects.

"Over the next two to three years, I would like to see the projects evolve to include teams of students working together and ongoing relationships with community organizations," Dr. Brill says. "Partnering with the regional AHEC systems could allow a deeper integration into the health of the local sites."

Read more about the PCC community project curriculum.

Posted: October 14, 2010