A reflection on Imperial College London’s Community Action Project

ABSTRACT

The diverse and versatile roles that doctors today hold highlight the importance of encouraging personal and professional development within medical students enabling them to become confident leaders and innovators. The introduction of core curriculum projects such as the Community Action Project (CAP) endorses the development of skills required to prepare all students for their future role as doctors. The aim of this report is to reflect on our experiences having taken part in the CAP during our third year at medical school. The CAP at Imperial College London provides all medical undergraduates in their third year of medical school with an opportunity to undertake a quality improvement project. The CAP required students to engage with the local community and members of staff at the general practice to identify a need and deliver an appropriate intervention which was then evaluated. The CAP enabled us to deliver an intervention in the form of a creative stop-motion video created with patients at the practice. The project encouraged students to find creative ways to tackle prominent health-care issues within local communities and also acted as a stepping-stone for students to consider how to tackle larger healthcare issues on a national scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Medical education
• students
• primary care
• Quality improvement project
• personal professional development
• mental health
• video resources
• undergraduate

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.