Basic Medical Training for Refugees via Collaborative Blended Learning: Quasi-Experimental Design (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND The world is currently witnessing its highest rates of refugees and displaced persons, with more than 68.5 million people worldwide forced to leave their homes due to persecution, conflict, violence and other human rights violations. International emergency responses have mostly focused on ensuring basic needs such as health, nutrition, and basic education are met. With little end in sight to the majority of refugee crises, there is an increasing realization that longer term solutions are needed to empower young people caught up in these protracted situations. As refugee camps across the world grow exponentially, tertiary education has the potential to provide a solution that could empower refugees and help fill qualified staff shortages in camps, especially in camp health services that aim to satisfy some basic needs of their populations. OBJECTIVE With the advancement of new technologies and easier access to the Internet, higher education has evolved to become a more attainable goal than ever before. Many across the world can now access online and blended learning courses, in situations, such as refugee camps, where brick and mortar higher education is not an option. With this in mind, the University of Geneva’s InZone–Raft project has implemented a blended learning course in Kakuma refugee camp to train 16 students in basic medical studies. METHODS This study focuses on the implementation, pedagogical evolution and impact of this project by looking at factors that influence the students’ knowledge acquisition, the amount of knowledge they acquired, and comparing student outcomes in the course with a previous course in Kakuma. RESULTS Of the 16 students who started the course, 10 received 6 ECTS for successful completion of the course. Overall, it was found that new knowledge was well received by the students, who scored higher in all learning modalities compared to students who took part the previous course. Pedagogical adjustments were also found to improve student involvement in the course, with higher participation rates and better overall satisfaction observed. CONCLUSIONS This project has provided refugees with high-level basic medical training in a challenging environment. This student cohort reached a high level of medical knowledge and was able to develop complex questions on medical topics. In addition, their excellent results in the quizzes and final exams prove that their new knowledge has been well received. This training allows refugees to integrate into the health services in the camp and will have a positive impact on the shortage of staff in the region. In addition, implementation in other refugee camps should be undertaken CLINICALTRIAL NA