Community Service Directorate is the newly established Directorate of St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College to organize, facilitate, and administer community service activities of the college. It is set into action as of July 2013 E.C with the declaration of the college’s senate – Senate Legislation 2021.
What is Community Service?
Community service refers to the provision of unpaid service to the community outside the College’s teaching health facilities; which has bidimensional benefits – benefits for the community and the providers.
It is based on the principle of service-learning (community-based education) which has mutual benefit to the community and the providers. The community benefits from getting free health service while the academic staff/students will develop their academic knowledge and skill, sense of social responsibility, and commitment to help others for no return.
It will employ outreach activities, modern technologies, HDSS and Campaign programs to reach an unreachable segment of the community in their vicinity and will provide consultation services, clinical services, and other preventive and curative health service campaigns as per the human, material and financial resources allows to do so.
What are the benefits of Community Service for the Health Program?
The Community Service has the following benefits for health programs of the country:
- It will strengthen the linkage between the community and health service providers so that the community builds trust in modern medical services and allows the academic staff to explore the barriers to the overall health service;
- It is a model of exercise to bring about a paradigm shift in health service provision from the overemphasized curative and institution-based to a community-based practice for many of the major public health issues, with household and community participation in bringing about a long-lasting solution in our primary health care.
- It is an opportunity to mobilize the community for health interventions and evaluate their effectiveness.
- It is the best platform to carry out community-based observational and experimental studies.
What Are Benefits for Students?
- Enables them to have insight on the status of the community health and provides an opportunity to expose them to real-life events and situations;
- Allows them to demonstrate their health facility-based knowledge and skill in a community where resources are scarce; facing some of the challenges while in preservice stage shall better prepare the students to be creative and innovative in settings where resources are scarce;
- Is an open field to learn to take responsibility and handling community problems;
- Is an opportunity for the students to exercise and understand the true concept of giving back;
- May influence their interest in the choice of their career pathway; and
- Opens room for socialization and networking beyond on-campus life.
What are Benefits for the Staff and the College?
- It provides a platform for the staff of the college to fulfill the promotional requirement of community service.
- It creates a research village that makes it systematically easy and attractive for grant writers and project creators.
- Enables the students to have insight on the status of the community health and provides an opportunity to expose them to real-life events and situations.
- It increases the availability of data and strengthens the research system for the staff of the college.
- It has the potential to attract grant funders; a project designed to be implemented at the research village site has significant weight to convince and attract the funders and donors and help to generate revenue.
What are the Roles and Responsibilities of Staffs, Departments, and Schools of the college?
Based on the legislation of the college the following roles and responsibilities are identified:
- The department and schools shall assign a focal person for community service on request by the Directorate.
- The departments and schools should prepare the proposal of community service and submit it to the Community Service Directorate for approval.
- Departments and Schools prepare their annual plan of community service activities and share with the Directorate.
- Community Service activities done should be reported by the performer to the Directorate.
- The staff of the college should dedicate 15% of their duties to community service.
- Community service activity proposals can be designed and submitted to the Directorate by individuals, teams, or units.
What are the activities done so far?
Currently, different projects are designed by some units/departments of the college and the activities listed in the table below are being done. Some of them are pedagogical components of the college and have already been integrated into the curriculum while the rest are growing to the program level.