Az iskolai kortárs egészségnevelői tevékenység lehetséges szerepe az orvosképzésben

Abstract

Introduction Lack of skills, commitment, and poor health behavior are barriers to physicians providing lifestyle counseling. We aimed to explore the role of doing school-based peer health education during training in overcoming these barriers. We studied educators of the Balassagyarmat Health Education Program (BEP) to investigate what experiences they had gained that are useful for medical practice, how committed they had become to health education, and whether their health behavior had changed. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with those medical student peer educators of BEP (n=9) who had mastered all topics of the program. Our data were subjected to qualitative content analysis. Our deductive codes were defined by the research questions, and responses to these were inductively coded and aggregated along the questions. Results Participants cited improvements in patient education, motivation, and partnership building as useful for the practice. Their commitment strengthened and they voluntarily and successfully conducted health education in their communities and with their patients following the program. They reported changes in their behavior in terms of more conscious alcohol use and diet and increased physical activity. Conclusions The health education activity helped peer educators develop medical skills and commitment to health education and positive health behavior change; thus, we recommend its integration into medical education.