Evaluation of a training programme to induct medical students in delivering public health talks

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONIt is uncommon for medical students to deliver public health talks as part of their medical education curriculum. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a novel training programme that required medical students to deliver public health talks during their family medicine (FM) clerkship in a Singapore primary care institution. METHODSThe FM faculty staff guided teams of third-year medical students to select appropriate topics for health talks that were to be conducted at designated polyclinics. The talks were video-recorded and appraised for clarity, content and delivery. The appraisal was done by the student's peers and assigned faculty staff. The audience was surveyed to determine their satisfaction level and understanding of the talks. The students also self-rated the effectiveness of this new teaching activity. RESULTSA total of 120 medical students completed a questionnaire to rate the effectiveness of the new teaching activity.85.8% of the students felt confident about the delivery of their talks, 95.8% reported having learnt how to deliver talks and 92.5% perceived this new training modality as useful in their medical education. Based on the results of the audience survey, the speakers were perceived as knowledgeable (53.1%), confident (51.3%) and professional (39.0%). Assessment of 15 video-recorded talks showed satisfactory delivery of the talks by the students. CONCLUSIONThe majority of the students reported a favourable overall learning experience under this new training programme. This finding is supported by the positive feedback garnered from the audience, peers of the medical students and the faculty staff.

Communication skills training in other languages

“…2 This empowered them to explore and address public health beliefs, which in turn seemed to strengthen their cultural competence. 3 As the ageing population of Singapore grows, there is an increase in older patients who are generally more fl uent in their mother tongue, such as Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and various dialects, than in English. Hence, training local health care workers in multilingual communication skills is required alongside the use of interpreters, who may not always be available.…”