Benefits of a Pediatric Home Visitation Program Involving TCOM Students

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2017-03-14

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Raines-Milenkov, Amy
Calder, Brittany
Bowman, Paul
Shah, Deep

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Background: Home visitation programs increase child development, access to healthcare, and attendance at well child visits as well as decrease accidental injuries. By focusing on maternal and child health, there is the opportunity to prevent disease development, improve overall health, and decrease infant mortality. Including medical students in home visitation has the potential to build relationships and understanding that increases quality of care and learning. The purpose of this project was to assess the feasibility and benefits of incorporating Texas College of Osteopathic Medical (TCOM) students into an existing UNT Health Science Center home visitation program. Methods: To assess the feasibility of this type of model at UNTHSC, a literature review of home visitation programs that involve medical students was conducted. Additionally, an interview and review of similar UNTHSC programs were conducted. Results: The literature revealed several benefits for student learning. For example, medical students found that many of their misconceptions about their patients and their care were corrected by visiting the patient's home. Additionally, students felt they could provide better care after seeing the environments where their patients lived. The experience also helped the students view the patient as a person not just their disease and increased humanism in their care. Conclusions: The literature suggests incorporating medical students into home visitation programs has benefits for the medical students and their future practice. UNTHSC has existing assets that could foster this type of educational experience. For example, the Healthy Start Program is a home visitation program with the intention of improving maternal and infant health. This program would be the backbone for a program involving medical students. Additionally, TCOM has a geriatric home visitation program whose logistics and curriculum could be used as a layout for a similar pediatric based program. A logic model detailing a sample pilot project will be presented. By building from established programs, instituting a pediatric home visitation program involving TCOM students could improve the quality of the medical students’ education while embracing the osteopathic model and providing service to the community. However, more research is needed to understand the program participant’s perspectives and acceptability of receiving services from medical students.

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