The relevance and role of homestays in medical education: a scoping study

ABSTRACT

Background: The community-based medical education curriculum is growing in popularity as a strategy to bring universal health coverage to underserved communities by providing medical students with hands-on training in primary health care. Accommodation and immersion of medical students within the community will become increasingly important to the success of community-based curricula. In the context of tourism, homestays, where local families host guests, have shown to provide an immersive accommodation experience.

Objective: By exploring homestays in the educational context, this scoping study investigates their role in providing an immersive pedagogical experience for medical students.

Design: A scoping review was performed using the online databases ScienceDirect and the Duke University Library Database, which searches Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, LexisNexis Academic, Web of Science, Proquest, PubMed and WorldCat. Using the inclusion term ‘homestays’ and excluding the term ‘tourism’, 181 results were returned. AClose assessment using inclusion criteria narrowed this to 14 relevant articles.

Results: There is very little published research specific to the experience of medical students in community homestays, indicating a gap in the literature. However, the existing educational outcomes suggest homestays may have the potential to serve a significant role in medical education, especially as a component of decentralised or community-based programmes. The literature reveals that educational homestays influence language learning, cultural immersion, and the development of professional skills for health science careers. These outcomes relate to the level of engagement between students and hosts, including the catalytic role of community liaisons.

Conclusions: Homestays offer a unique depth of experience that has the potential to enrich the education of participating students, and require further research, particularly in the context of distributed and decentralised training platforms for medical and health sciences students. Future studies should explore the potential for homestays as a pedagogical component of community-based medical curriculum.

Abbreviations: CBME: Community-based medical education

KEYWORDS:

• Community-based education
• cultural exchange
• homestay
• student accommodation
• undergraduate medical education

Availability of data and materials

The data supporting the conclusions of this article are accessible through the detailed reference list. No original datasets are presented, due to the fact this is a review of existing literature.

Acknowledgments

Mosa Moshabela, Jenni Owen, and Bernhard Gaede contributed equally to this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical Considerations

Due to this paper being a scoping study that relied strictly on the review of existing literature, no participants were involved and no ethical approval was necessary.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of Health Sciences and the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal; Atlantic Philanthropies [20648]; the Office of Global AIDS Coordinator and the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health [5R24TW008863] and the Transformation in Medical Education (TiME) Study supported by the National Research Foundation [90394].