Student reflection: understanding the world beyond the classroom
Written: October 7, 2015
The Community, Population, and Public Health (CPPH) course aims to create future physicians who have an understanding of the world beyond their classroom. Each year medical students from U of T go out to schools around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to observe the population and the community.
What value do these experiential learning opportunities have to offer?
Just a few weeks ago, I made a visit to one of the Toronto inner-city public schools. I entered the classroom with the goal of engaging a group of young children in health-related activities.
“Are these real bones?” one of the children asked, as I opened a box of bones to facilitate my talk about the anatomy of the human body. Next, I went onto a discussion about the importance of hand hygiene. In a classroom filled with laughter, joy, and hands covered in glitter, I was able to demonstrate how easily germs can spread through contact from one person to another.
At the same time that I provided a lesson to the children I was astonished to see what impact these children were able to have on my own education – and that’s where the true lesson lied.
The children and dedicated teachers I had the pleasure of meeting, provided me with a better understanding of the disparities in availability of health care services within our own great city. The students narrated stories about times where race, socioeconomic status and their neighborhood of residence dictated the way in which they lived their life. The classroom teacher spoke to me about the high rates of depression and anxiety among children living in a community where violence and social problems are the norm. The biggest challenge in receiving health care in inner-city communities is limited accessibility to primary health care and lack of education about the role of medical professionals.
As a future physician, I will be providing care for patients from diverse backgrounds and it is through experiences such as the CPPH school visits that I have been able to gain a greater appreciation of social determinants of health. The school visit experience provided me with a framework for understanding the significance of creating equitably nurturing conditions for all children and supporting the development of a healthier young generation that will build a better future for our society.
This student experience article expresses the views of first year MD Program student Tina Felfeli and is not meant to be representative of the entire student experience, nor represent the MD Program.
