Community Health Care
Rationale
The increasing number of physicians practicing under managed care and in community-oriented primary care practices necessitates expanding medical education to prepare graduates for population-based clinical practice. Population-based clinical practice includes (in a managed care setting) the health of an enrolled population and/or (in a community-based setting) the health of a population, in addition to that of the individual patient, through concern with resource allocation, epidemiology, and the care of patients whose needs are not currently met by the health care system.
Prerequisites
A basic understanding of epidemiology as it relates to the medical literature.
A basic understanding of health care financing issues.
Specific Learning Objectives
- Knowledge: Each student should be able to describe:
- how disease epidemiology in a community differs from that experienced in office or hospital practice.
- how health care financing and organization affect individual patients, physicians, and the community.
- how community and individual responses to health problems may be affected by both individual and community social characteristics.
- local government, social service, or community organizations that provide links between the underserved members of the community and the medical care systems.
- the barriers faced by his/her patients in the community setting.
- Skills: Each student should be able to:
- identify patients whose illnesses may put the community at risk.
- identify the unique characteristics of a community that affect an individual’s health as well as that of the community.
- consider how a patient’s community and cultural context may affect his or her approach to health care.
- Attitudes: Each student should:
- incorporate a population-based perspective in analyzing clinical problems.
- use, in daily patient care, an understanding of the social characteristics of a particular community that affect patient attitudes toward health.