Teaching public health: seminar or lecture.

Introduction: Several pedagogical methods can be used to impart medical education but the challenge is to make students appreciate critical thinking and apply their knowledge. Objectives: We developed a strategy to train students in public health due to the managerial constraints and academic interest. The academic purpose was to avoid passive learning, increase student involvement, encourage interaction and make learning more engaging and effective. Methods: Instead of delivering lectures, we encouraged the students to prepare seminars on topics of public health importance based on the guidelines provided by the lecturers and present them to their peers. The lecturers were present only to guide and supervise the students. Using a questionnaire, students’ perception on the lecture and seminar mode of teaching was evaluated. Results: Lecture: Organizational content and the learning outcomes were better (p=0.00). Study material easily available (p=0.003), useful (p=0.01), better content (p=0.00) and quality (p=0.00). The students claim that there was more teacher guidance (p=0.00), care for student learning (p=0.00) and the interest and understanding in the subject taught increased (p=0.00). Flow of the subject matter was also better (p=0.00). Seminar: More students assumed that their knowledge was adequate prior to the seminars (p=0.00). They found the seminars to be difficult. Motivation to read about the topic was increased. Improved the students presentation skills (p=0.001), communication skills (p=0.00) and provoked interest in the topics taught (p=0.04). Played a bigger role in student interaction, problem solving and teamwork. More students agreed that there was more student involvement and that seminar provoked their interest. Conclusion: From the findings of this study we found that a combination of both the methodologies is ideal as both have strengths as well as weaknesses.

Teaching racial understanding to medical students.

Aim: To facilitate and promote racial understanding among medical students as part of their training Methodology: A descriptive study comprising of opinions of students and foster parents about the home stay programme and its influence on racial understanding. Results and Discussion: 229 medical students and 47 foster parents participated to state their opinions regarding living with other races, the home stay programme and racial understanding. Results showed a positive change post home stay among the students and foster parents on these three domains. There was also a significant change in the mean scores of the students’ perception about the villagers and their own skills and ability post home stay. Majority of the foster parents experienced moderate improvement of their understanding of the different races and their cultures. Conclusions: The home stay programme has made a positive change in the perception of the participants on racial understanding. It is particularly of importance because the students are in training for an important profession; that of a medical doctor.