Beyond the ward and waiting room: a community-based non-clinical placement programme for Australian medical students

Placement programmes are essential to medical education but almost invariably take place in clinical settings, even when community based. Australia's Monash University, however, has included in its core MBBS curriculum a non-clinical placement for second-year students, the Community Based Practice (CBP) programme. This involves partnerships with community organisations that are mostly non-medical. The programme includes a health promotion (HP) component where students respond to a HP or support need nominated by their placement organisation. Though inspired by community-based medical education (CBME) programmes in England and South Australia's Flinders University, its non-clinical focus represents a creative development in Australian medical education.

This article describes the programme, explores its place within CBME and outlines the results of its analysis of student responses using SPSS and NVivo.

The evidence showed development of students' communication skills; increased understanding and appreciation of the mainly non-medical health support infrastructure in local communities; increased understanding of HP and community health support at the local level; and contributions to the placement organisations through small-scale research or health support projects.

Placement programmes such as this can significantly contribute to medical education, especially in supporting health in local communities and understanding the needs of the marginalised.