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Social Accountability in Medical Training - Jenna Mollaney

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AAME, Helsinki.  Jenna Mollaney, Primary Care Education Manager



After tackling the overwhelming brochure of talks and workshops at AMEE (Association of Medical Education Europe) 2017, I settled upon a stream entitled ‘Social Accountability’. We were a small group of no more than 20 people and after the presentations, I felt sad that more people hadn’t been able to hear about the amazing work that is going on about SA (Social Accountability) in Medical Schools across the world. Hopefully this article will do a little bit to help get Educators thinking about their part in it.

First of all, what is Social Accountability? I found this video created by the International Federation of Medical Students Associations extremely enlightening: http://ifmsa.org/social-accountability/

It made me wonder, what are we at Imperial College doing to help support the idealistic vision of what a Medical School should look like? We want to create not only competent Doctors; but, Doctors with hearts who understand the population that they are serving.

I was impressed by the work that Dr Joanne Thompson and her team are doing at Sheffield University. They have set up a 4 week SA placement which sits in Year 3. Students are linked to local charities and schools and work with them on a project to serve the local population. From service evaluation to healthcare promotion the students are totally immersed in the organisation and at the end of the 4 weeks they have to present their project back to the organisation and fellow students. One outstanding example was a group of students who were working with a Dementia charity who designed a ‘dementia friendly’ community garden. They submitted their plans for funding and were awarded £20k in order to have it created. They really left a lasting legacy and had an impact on the local population. I was blown away.
How could we integrate some of these principles into our courses? We don’t have all of the answers just yet but we are thinking of a project which could sit within the year 3 MICA attachment. If you are part of a GP Practice who has local links with charities when we would love to hear from you on how you think that we could marry the 2 together. Thank you j.mollaney@imperial.ac.uk




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