Capacity building of medical students – a strategy to respond to the epidemic of chronic disease in developing countries such as India

Background: Developing countries such as India face an increasing burden of chronic diseases. Shortage of trained manpower and meager allocation of budget by the government for health, pose additional challenges for tackling the chronic disease problems in the country. The need of the hour is to develop feasible, quick, cost effective and sustainable strategies for patients in need of long term care. Capacity building of every medical graduate for care of patients with chronic disease could serve as an effective tool.

 

Objective: To assess the impact of an educational intervention workshop in capacity building of medical students for the care of patients with chronic conditions.

 

Methodology: A 5 day intensive, integrated module based workshop was organized for medical students (intervention group) based on the World Health Organization‟ chronic care module for HIV / AIDS. The students were subjected to a structured, written evaluation which was inbuilt in the modules. Formal and informal feedback from the students was obtained. Scores were compared against a similar group of students who did not attend the workshop (matched control group).

 

Results: The mean post-test score of the intervention group of students improved to 36.06 from the pre-test score of 19.83 (maximum attainable score was 38). The standard deviation of the intervention group was 3.85 with 99% confidence interval of 34.12 - 37.99 and was statistically significant by Paired t-test (p < 0.00001).

 

Conclusion: The students opined that the workshop had not only increased their knowledge and understanding of chronic care, but had empowered them with the necessary skills and confidence to tackle the patients with chronic conditions.