Promoting Service Orientation in Undergraduate Medical Students Through a Virtual Community Health Center

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Community Service

Abstract

Responding to national need to prepare healthcare professionals willing to work with medically underserved populations, our medical school developed a series of interactive, gamified virtual patient training modules designed to provide simulated clinical practice in a community health center context.

During the first year of medical school, 107 students bound for service learning participated in orientation to “community oriented primary care” by completing simulated patient encounters in a Virtual Community Health Center (VCHC). After simulation, students completed case debriefs regarding social determinants and community oriented primary care. Open-ended responses were analyzed and coded using grounded theory.

Conclusion. Our experience suggests that VCHC cases provide students the opportunity to reflect on humanistic care and community oriented primary care.

Author

• Lise McCoy, A.T. Still University