The Use of Special Study Modules as a Learning Tool for Increasing Community and Civic Engagement in an Irish Undergraduate Medical Curriculum
Gerard Flaherty (NUI Galway), Rosemary Geoghegan (NUI Galway), Lorraine McIlrath (NUI Galway)
Abstract
Introduction
Civic and community engagement is central to the educational mission of modern Irish Universities. The majority of graduates from Irish medical schools progress to occupy influential positions within their local community and in the wider society. Such roles are demanding and require a significant repertoire of interpersonal knowledge, skills and attitudes. The undergraduate medical curriculum must orient itself to prepare medical students for the challenges of civic and community engagement. The undergraduate medical curriculum at the National University of Ireland, Galway is currently undergoing major reforms as it makes the transition from a traditional, discipline-based programme to an integrated curriculum with a greater emphasis on the teaching of professionalism.
Special Study Modules
The reform of its curriculum has allowed the medical school to embrace curricular innovations, including the development of special study modules. Special study modules provide students with the opportunity to explore subjects of particular interest to them in greater depth and to develop essential lifelong learning skills while so doing. One of the principal objectives of our special study module programme has been to foster linkages with community-based organisations in an effort to increase medical student awareness of the needs of the wider community, to allow them to interact with community organisation leaders and the people they serve, and to equip medical students with the skills and attitudes necessary to become community leaders themselves. Out of a programme of 26 special study modules which are currently offered to students in the first two years of the 5-year undergraduate medical programme, 10 of these modules have a community-based service learning dimension: community-based CPR teaching; sign language; Malaysian culture; end of life enhancement; teenage mental health promotion; exercise physiology; pre-hospital emergency care; adolescent medicine; sports science research and complementary medicine. We plan to develop additional special study modules which will bring our medical students into contact with organisations serving native Irish speakers living in the Connemara Gaeltacht, patients in the community living with HIV/AIDS, teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds, asylum seekers and refugees.
Partnership with the Community Knowledge Initiative
The development of our community-based special study modules has been facilitated by a strong partnership between the School of Medicine and the Community Knowledge Initiative, a strategic initiative within the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at NUI Galway, which aims to develop and strengthen civic engagement through its support of service learning programmes, student volunteering, research and bilateral knowledge sharing with the wider community.
Outcomes
Feedback from students participating in these community-based special study modules has been very positive to date and a formal evaluation of the programme is underway. Our medical school anticipates high levels of student satisfaction, professional enrichment of module supervisors and a greater appreciation of our collective professional responsibility as medical educators and learners to our local community and to society. This programme may serve as a model of successful University-Community partnership for other Irish and international medical schools.
