Education
“we are making the transition towards a system with more focus on prevention and population health, renewed interest in basic and general care, and bridging the gap between the medical and social domains”
Current health care systems struggle to cope with the most important health problems of the 21st century. The approach of waiting until people get ill, focusing on biomedical problems, providing hyper-specialized care in clinical institutes, and separating curative and social care, is no longer sustainable. In this approach, many potential health benefits of prevention are missed and patients often get too little and uncoordinated support in their societal participation. Therefore, we are making the transition towards a system with more focus on prevention and population health, renewed interest in basic and general care, and bridging the gap between the medical and social domains.
The Education and Training section of our department aims to prepare future physicians for their tasks in this changing health care environment. We provide education in population health aspects (e.g. social determinants of health, prevention, health care efficiency) and training in preventative and collaborative skills (e.g. health education, vaccination, screening, shared decision making, team collaboration and social medicine). We develop and implement novel teaching methods, including blended, experiential, and community service learning.
Highlights
of Education in 2020
Combined internship Social Medicine and General Practice
During their combined internship in Social Medicine and General Practice students carry out a “district scan” in the region. The scan is intended to provide insight into the problems and opportunities for better population health The scan is carried out on the basis of observations, interviews and desk research of sociodemographic data. By studying the district and through local patient contacts, the students experience that there are many group problems that cannot be solved individually. In their reflections they bring in examples like 'If the air quality in the Feijenoord district does not improve, COPD care will continue to be without substantial results'. The students learn how important it is to take the context of the patient into account when they look at disease, treatment and prevention.
Figure 1: Life expectancy of males by neighborhood in Rotterdam.
Dutch national social service program
According to Erasmus MC's educational vision students should be formed into socially engaged academics. That is why our department conducted a pilot in which four medical students gave resuscitation lessons to high school students in a deprived neighbourhood. In three weeks, the students were trained as first aid teachers by “Artsencollectief Schok en Pomp”. They received didactic tips, worked on presentation skills and learned to apply social medical skills within a diverse target group. The pilot was initiated by Reddingsbrigade Nederland as part of the Dutch national social service program (Maatschappelijke Dienst Tijd, MDT) ). In this program, young people discover where their talents lie while directly contributing to society. Based on the success of this pilot, ZonMw funded a two-year extension of this initiative in which 5000 high school students will be trained by 60 medical students of Erasmus MC.
