Abstract:

Background: The Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) School of Medicine which started in 2003 has introduced and included into its’ medical curriculum which is of ‘community socially driven’, a unique ‘PuPUK’ programme which has a concept of community engagement, whereby medical students would have a family based medico-social learning experience throughout their five years undergraduate medical course with their ‘foster family’ in rural areas of Kudat district of Sabah.
Objective: Through smart partnership between university and the community, both the university (students and academicians) and community (rural families) will benefit the sharing of knowledge transfer, gain understanding on cultural beliefs and sensitivity, as well as health-related behavior of community, which will assist both parties in building community empowerment for health in the community, while at the same time enable to produce more defined culturally and socially driven of evidence based medicine doctors.
Method: Students are paired during their first year of study and will be assigned a suitable family in rural Kudat district of Sabah of a different ethnic. The families were chosen by the local leaders in Kudat based on the criteria of agreeing to participate with signature consent, preferably from a poor family background and who may benefit from the programme. The students will be assisted by an appointed lecturer/supervisor. The implementation of the PuPUK programme will involve four stages: Stage 1 will be the family adoption week. This serve as the baseline for the students understanding of the particular family as a functional unit, appreciate the significance of interaction between members, the dynamics and practices that govern the family and behavior. Stage II involves student conducting informal visits at least 3 times a year and identify the important life events in the family, appreciate the process and changes that occurs such as crisis events, role changes, etc. Stage III will allow student to interpret or analyze the information. Students are then required to study the ‘family problem’ and discuss with their supervisor on those issues. Some students would find a common theme/problems between families in order to organize a community programme e.g. health education on hygiene, good habits, etc. In Stage IV, students are required to prepare the final report that consist of family information, health, perception & behavior, summary of the visits, major family life event chart, problems and report on intervention programme. Student annual reports and log book are used as evidence on monitoring their progress. The final report will be presented at the end of their medical studies (during 5th year) for evaluation by the panels of academicians.
Results: PuPUK programme has been implemented to the 10th batch of UMS medical students. Support obtained from commitment of the foster families of Kudat, the local political leaders and authority, as well as UMS staffs and students is integral in ensuring the success and continuation of such partnership and implementation of the programme.
Conclusion: The implementation of PuPUK programme upon the medical students was able to ensure the strengthening of the knowledge on function of a family, the cultivation of psychosocial skills, stimulate evidence based medicine and allow experiences gained to enable to produce all rounded community engaged doctors.

Keywords:

Pupuk, UMS, Community engaged, medical school, curriculum.