Why should medical students care about health policy?

Development and evaluation of an extra-curricular programme focussing on high impact career opportunities for medical professionals

BACKGROUND

Many medical professionals seek to do good through their careers, which may involve pursuing non-clinical options such as research, policy, or education in addition to clinical work. Working out which paths will lead to the largest social impact is a challenging question and of interest to many doctors. However, there are few, if any, services that use an impact-oriented framework to support doctors who want to make career decisions based on impact.

OBJECTIVES

To describe the development of an 8-week fellowship programme to introduce medical professionals to careers paths and focus areas which could lead to a particularly large social impact. And to evaluate the programme in terms of engagement, utility, changes in knowledge and career attitudes of participants.

METHODS

The ADDIE instructional design model was used to design and evaluate this fellowship programme. An 8-week curriculum was designed by medical professionals and delivered to medical students and doctors around the world utilising a flipped learning style. Quantitative and qualitative data on the programme were collected and analysed.

RESULTS

There was more demand for the programme than anticipated. We found that the fellowship was engaging and useful to medical students and doctors. It resulted in an increase in knowledge and skills on how to consider impact in one's own career and a change in participants' attitudes and behaviours, with some participants making changes to their career and charitable giving following the programme.

CONCLUSIONS

We believe an impact-orientated, practical co-curricular programme is valuable to medical professionals exploring impactful career options and there is demand for further programmes in this space.

Medical Students’ Perception Regarding Health Policy Teaching and Their Participation in Health Policy Roles: A Survey at a Public University in Malaysia

Background: Health policy is a set of comprehensive principles and legislations that guide how healthcare should be effectively delivered in the community. Medical schools should prepare students to undertake managerial responsibilities by incorporating health policy into the curriculum to deal with the intricacies of healthcare systems and their clinical roles in their future professional careers. Objective: To examine medical students’ perception at a Public University in Malaysia regarding teaching health policy and their participation in health policy roles. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study using universal sampling was carried out among the medical students using a paper-based questionnaire to collect the data. Results: Most respondents opined their willingness to learn health policy (80.9%) and that teaching health policy (83.6%) should be compulsory for medical students. The respondents thought health policy should be introduced earlier in Year 1 or 2. The student scores on their knowledge regarding health policy and year of study were significantly associated with their involvement in the health policy roles in both the simple and multiple logistic regression. Both statistical tests reported higher participation in health policy roles with the higher year of study, though only Year 4 and 5 were significant in the simple logistic regression and only Year 5 in the multiple logistic regression compared to Year 1. On the other hand, age and type of admission show significant results only in the simple logistic regression, while the race was only significant at the multivariate level. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that most respondents showed their willingness to learn health policy, participate in the health policy programs, and recommend that health policy be considered an essential topic in the medical curriculum, which should be taught right from the first year of medical school. We recommend encouraging students’ participation in health policy activities.

Medical student involvement in health policy roles

OBJECTIVES

A teaching curriculum in health policy may be well established in medical school; however, an emphasis on applying taught principles via participation in health policy roles is less defined. We undertook a study to explore medical student participation in health policy roles.

DESIGN AND SETTING

An anonymous online survey via convenience sampling was conducted in the UK.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 112 students from six medical schools participated in the study.

OUTCOME MEASURES

The outcome measures were as follows: medical students' beliefs about their current knowledge of health policy and their desire to learn more; their current, past and future involvement in a health policy role, and perceived barriers to involvement.

RESULTS

Forty-seven percent of participants reported previous teaching on health policy, with the majority scoring themselves 2 out of 5 for knowledge about the topic (38%). Seventy-seven percent of participants expressed a desire to be taught health policy while 73% agreed with compulsory teaching. Ninety-six percent of participants reported no current or previous activity in a health policy role, with 61% willing to undertake a role in the future. The three main barriers to student involvement were: a lack of knowledge about health policy (57%), an unawareness of opportunities available (56%), and a lack of time (43%).

CONCLUSION

In addition to already established teaching programs within medical school, implementation of community-based experiences could improve knowledge of health policy, while providing an opportunity for students to gain experience in health policy committee roles.

Health Policy Training: A Review of the Literature

The context within which health care and public health systems operate is framed by health policies. There is growing consensus about the need for increased health policy leadership and a health professional workforce prepared to assume these leadership roles. At the same time, there is strong evidence supporting the need for a broader policy lens and the need to intentionally target health disparities. We reviewed the published literature between 1983 and 2013 regarding health policy training. From 5124 articles identified, 33 met inclusion criteria. Articles varied across common themes including target audience, goal(s), health policy definition, and core curricular content. The majority of articles were directed to medical or nursing audiences. Most articles framed health policy as health care policy and only a small number adopted a broader health in all policies definition. Few articles specifically addressed vulnerable populations or health disparities. The need for more rigorous research and evaluation to inform health policy training is compelling. Providing health professionals with the knowledge and skills to engage and take leadership roles in health policy will require training programs to move beyond their limited health care-oriented health policy framework to adopt a broader health and health equity in all policies approach.