Rebecca Nekaka, Paul Oboth, Yahaya Gavamukulya, Lydia Ssenyonga, Julius Nteziyaremye*, Jacob Iramiot Stanley, Joseph Mpagi Luwaga, Julius Wandabwa and Paul Waako
Background: Despite health being a fundamental human right, health inequality continues to be a challenge to many societies and is a threat to sustainable development. One major contributing factor is lack of human resource for health especially in rural and remote areas. One of the interventions to reduce this burden is medical education training that includes innovations that take the health worker closer to the environment and community he/she is likely to serve. In order ring this to a reality, Busitema University Faculty of Health Sciences (BUFHS) undergraduate courses were designed with a strong Community-Based Education, Research and Services (COBERS) program since its inception in 2013. Included along were Inter-Professional Education (IPE) approach and research education. IPE as a new innovation in the COBERS, was innovated with a target to create different professionals of health workers that will appreciate learning and working together rather than run in silos to solve community needs. This communication is aimed at providing a platform from which health training institutions can learn from our experience and the successes and probably challenges of COBERS. Materials and methods: We implemented COBERS with IPE in our curriculum for the undergraduate students of nursing and medicine during their community attachment. Students under the different programmes were randomly chosen to go to the COBERS sites for their community training and cross-cutting courses were designed to be undertaken during that period. The same groups of students are maintained, and same facility and preceptors and mentors are maintained for the duration of the training. They were assigned a preceptor at the site and a supervisor at the faculty. Follow up of of the successful implementation of the programme was done on a daily basis by the trainers led by the preceptor and an interim assessment is done by the supervisor. At the end of the placement students write a report that is marked together with their log books. Results: COBERS program significantly has improved year over year. In addition to the value of the community experiences to the students, tangible program outcomes have been recorded. Some of the program outcomes include capacity building in research skills for faculty mentors, research skills introduced in undergraduate training, a strong research mentorship program, health promotion in the communities, and a strong relationship between the university and the community training sites. Conclusion: The program did not only allow the university to rethink traditional learning strategies and programs but also improved the skills of the academic staff and preceptors.
