Connecting with the Community -Experiences of Medical Students doing Homestays in Rural South Africa

Bernhard Gaede^*

• University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

The idea of training health professionals to be responsive to the needs of their patients and communities has emerged as a central concept in health professions education (HPE) (Frenk et al, ASSAF). This has often been conceptualized to include a strong public health perspective and understanding of social determinants of health as part of many of the curricula of HPE programs.However, the theoretical positioning or didactic teaching on the ecological links between a person's illness and the individual, contextual and cultural dimensions may be inadequate to train health professionals to be able to deeply appreciate the context of the people that they treat -and therefore to be adequately responsive to the needs of the individuals, families and communities that seek care.In order to increase the engagement in communities, a homestay project was initiated (see below for details) that offered final year students to live in the community during a 7 week rural attachment.While homestays are becoming common in tourism, their application is less commonly explored in the literature in educational settings (Hughes). Where homestays for medical students has been used, the objectives for the approach has varied, such as finding a local solution to accommodation, particularly for elective students in global health or creating a setting for teaching cultural competence. Research by Crampton et al. (2013) demonstrates that homestays facilitate cultural immersion and community integration during rural clinical rotations, improving students' understanding of social determinants of health. The literature on homestays also highlights the role in enhancing clinical training experiences, particularly in rural and international settings (Hughes et al.