Community-Directed Curriculum: The Introduction

By: Sarrah de la Rosa

Ateneo de Zamboanga University-School of Medicine (ADZU-SOM) has an innovative curriculum wherein it caters the triple helix: Student-Centered, Community-Directed and Problem-Based Curriculum. It permits medical students to learn not only in the four corners of a room with books and professors/doctors teaching, but it allows students to think critically, analyze problems to attain the specific diagnosis, teach them how Self-Directed Learning is more efficient, allows them to apply learned concepts in the hospital and community settings, and produce competent doctors suitable for the country.

Community-Directed Curriculum, one of the three curriculums which involves students to be dispersed in a specific community wherein working problem, professional skills and population medicine learning strands will be integrated, applied, practiced and enhanced within the community setting. The mentioned strands are called Learning Strands. The Working Problem Strand allows students to analyze problems to find solutions by means of information gathered from Basic and Clinical Sciences (Biological Perspective), by considering the ethical issues, psychological impact of disease (Behavioral Perspective) and by perceiving the sociological impact in a community (Population Perspective). The Professional Skill Strand, on the other hand, teaches or improves communication skills by practical experience upon interviewing and counselling on a student group. It also teaches and instills Clinical Management Skills done in a hospital setting wherein learned concepts from PBL sessions will be applied. Lastly, the Population Medical Strand, wherein skills from the previous two strands will be combined to be applied on a specific community. Thus, enabling the students to gather needed data by interviewing, considering the social impacts, diseases, lack of resources and etc. Through this, identification, assessment and analysis of the perceived problems will be done to be able to prioritize and find solutions for future interventions and implementations (ADZU-SOM, 2013).

With this curriculum, it divides students into groups with 8-10 members assigned to a permanent community for four years. Each year, students from levels 1-3 will live within their specified area for 2 months; 1 month on October-November and 1 month on March-April. One Community Health Plan per group, 1 Family Health Plan and Individual Health Plan per individual are to be submitted after each exposure. When reached level 4, the group will stay within the community for 10 months. During the stay; interviews, identification of problems, interventions, and implementation of proposed and accepted plans are expected.

As observed, the curriculum does not only allows students to integrate and apply the three learning strands but also teaches students to let go of each comfort zones, face reality of life and be one with the people of the community. It also trains medical students to be a Self-Directing Physician, Learner, Researcher, Manager, Director and Teacher.

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