Approaches to Understanding and Addressing Health-Related Concerns of Communities: The Education of Health Professionals

Abstract

Medical education is a vast and ever-growing field that has to consider and keep pace with the emergence of new diseases and the advancement of therapeutic methods. In order to accommodate this growing reality of the field, medical curricula incorporate much factual knowledge into the education of the students. However, the emphasis on factual biomedical knowledge has positioned doctors as the unique possessors of knowledge that they disseminate for the benefit of society. As a consequence the patients’ /clients’ experiential expertise is not recognized as a viable source of knowledge and clients are treated as passive service recipients who have little role in the diagnosis and management of their own conditions. This situation has led a number of scholars to question the ethical underpinnings of medical practice and call for change in the status quo. Our assumption is that such change could be achieved by reforming medical education, so that community members have a voice in the development and delivery of curricula. However, there are many barriers to meaningful community participation in health professional education. In our community-based participatory action research project, we are exploring how the current relationship between a medical school (university campus) and people who are vulnerable or marginalized (community) is tempered by different worldviews and understandings of knowledge and learning. We draw on a review of the literature and key informant interviews to explore the means through which a shared understanding of different forms of knowledge and learning could be promoted in campus and community, and to present a mechanism that offers optimal practices to engage campus and community in health professional education. In this presentation we will present findings to date and engage the audience in a discussion about the implications of different views of knowledge in the university and community.