Community health learning experiences of Colombian undergraduate medical students. A phenomenographic research study

Medical students’ perceptions of their community learning experiences can provide valuable insights for evolving and improving healthcare professional education curricula to better respond to health needs. This study aims to explore the learning experiences of undergraduate medical students in a community health course at a Colombian University. Fifteen students who had completed the Family Medicine and Community Health course participated in this qualitative study, employing a phenomenographic approach and interview technique. The phenomenographic analysis, informed by the transformative service-learning theoretical framework, resulted in the construction of categories of description, organized hierarchically, based on levels of understanding. The findings revealed five main community health learning experiences: Fulfilling the requirements, Educating the community, Solving health problems, Joint construction, and Personal transformation. Students experienced learning in diverse hierarchical learning levels, with their understanding around community health evolving over time. Transformative learning experiences were identified among only some students, indicating the potential for everyone to reach such levels of complexity and depth. Educationally critical aspects for achieving more complex levels of learning include exposure to intense and major challenges in longer periods of community services, reflection guided by teacher in intentional pedagogical spaces, feedback, and meaningful relationships between key stakeholders. These findings hold significance for medical programs that offer community medicine or related courses, since they present pedagogical opportunities to create and improve similar learning contexts in other domains.