Abstract :
In the previous issue of IJCP, I had a short note about accountability of universities and scientific
institutions how to train the health manpower responding to comprehensive needs of the patients
and communities.
In a comprehensive education the faculties should practice models that differed from traditional
practice which is going on in many of them nowadays. They have to be more considering not only
to the patients who seek medical care but also those individuals in a given population who do not
or cannot seek care, and they should not forget the care givers as well. This is called Community
Oriented Medical Education (COME) which is responsible to whole population, as both sexes and
all ages with a comprehensive and integrated approach. Institutions should have the ability to
analyses the burden of illness of the supervised population and to determine the problems with
the highest priority which is reflected in the educational materials and curriculum. In many
traditional schools medical students have spent most of their time in lecture halls, libraries,
laboratories, and tertiary care hospitals. In COME it is sensible to have students spent part of
their time in primary care setting which is as closely as possible to the eventual practice. It means
for example care of a cancer case is not related only to the surgery, or medication in tertiary
hospitals, but the whole social, cultural and spiritual aspect should be under consideration which is
possible in close relation to the case and his/her family and environment in the real community.
Healthcare is a political issue for political parties and governments on one side, and for manager
and health workers on the other, so it is necessary that the problems concerning the health of a
population should be reflected in education for training the effective and well educated students,
to do so, the introduction of epidemiological thinking in health policy and anticipating health
problems is of great importance for planning and managing the education.
