Evaluation of Community and Family Case Studies (CFCS): A Community based training of medical students

The International Medical University has a Community and Family Case Study (CFCS) programme as part of the training for medical students. The aim of the programme is to emphasize the family and community perspective of patient care in the home environment. A cross-sectional descriptive study was done among 66 final year medical students using a questionnaire. The students were in the 10th Semester and had completed their Community and Family Case Studies (CFCS) programme. Majority (54.5%) of the students who were interviewed were Malays, 34.8% Chinese and 9.1% Indians. Majority of the students (87.9%) liked the programme because it was a good opportunity to understand the patient in their home environment; it improved their commination skills and made them understand the patient better in the community setting. The perceived problem in this programme by the students were mainly choosing an index patient initially (32.8%), patient cooperation (19.0%) and transportation to the patients' house (13.8%). They said that this programme was useful because they learnt more about the disease (45%) and understood the patient management better (15%). The programme also provided the students a wider exposure to medicine (37.9%) and the opportunity to practice clinical skills. Overall the CFCS programme in IMU was well liked by the students as it gave them an opportunity to practice some of the clinical skills in the patients' home environment and it provided an opportunity to manage the patient better. The major problem the students faced was in selecting the index patient.