School visits: Medical students as teachers

Developing links with local communities is becoming a priority for medical schools, especially as they encourage students to enter primary care. In this early clinical contact program, second-year students make presentations in local schools. Our experience documents that community education projects can be successfully incorporated into the preclinical curriculum. However, outreach programs of this type need to focus on educational rather than promotional goals. Early in the program, a lack of educational materials and readily available promotional items distorted the image of the program and led to questions about its value. Providing high-quality teaching materials addressed these concerns and led to a significant increase in teacher ratings of the program.