Teaching public health in UK medical schools: ‘things have improved: teaching no longer feels like an expensive hobby’

Abstract

Background

Public health matters: Innovative approaches for engaging medical students

“…Further integration of public health teaching within medical curricula can result from two other factors: student selected components and assessment. Although public health content is already a core component of the curriculum, student selected (or non-core) elements remain valuable (RCP 2010;Lyon et al 2016). Developing these components in public health is a recognized approach towards introducing new content which can later be converted into core curriculum.…”

“…Challenges Solutions Student factors Perception of public health as being outside a doctor's scope of practice (Ivory et al 2013) Demonstrate the clinical relevance of public health and epidemiology (Martinez et al 2014) -Case Study 2 Students enter medicine with a sense of social purpose, yet they are not interested in the social sciences (Mise 2014) Teacher factors Public health educators are sometimes not well trained in pedagogical methods or unable to connect with the current generation of students (Lyon et al 2016) Utilise technology enhanced learning by delivering teaching using methods relevant to the Millennial generation (Kirkwood & Price 2014) -Case Study 4 & 5…”

“…Develop new student selected components (example topics include global health, working with disabled people, violence and health) to increase student interest, and thereby promote the inclusion of new public health topics into the core curriculum (Lyon et al 2016)…”

“…Public health practice exists beyond the medical profession alone, with undergraduate and postgraduate level programs producing a highly multidisciplinary workforce (Evashwick et al 2014). However, in the context of medical curricula, public health faces the paradox of being increasingly emphasized by key national stakeholders (RCP 2010;NHS 2014;GMC 2015), while remaining a largely under-represented discipline in terms of the provision of teaching (Lyon et al 2016).…”

What is good general practice? Recollected

“…While no one doubts the scope for improving how public health is taught in medical schools, suffice to say that it will always be a minority interest. 3 Finally, while the justification for such role diversification may seem compelling, the evidence to justify it is often rather less so. Do we really know how much impact such activities will have?…”