A survey validation of generic objectives for community-based education in undergraduate medical training

A framework for the definition of generic objectives for community-based education (CBE) was developed for undergraduate medical programmes, particularly for developing countries. To probe the validity of the set of CBE objectives generated by this approach, opinions from a wider audience were sought. Questionnaires were sent to 72 medical schools in 36 developing countries. Half of the addressees were randomly drawn from the list of institutional members of The Network: Toward Unity For Health (TUFH) and stratified according to developing countries. Another 36 medical schools were randomly drawn from non-Network: TUFH schools from the same country where the selected Network: TUFH addressee was located, or from a neighbouring country. A total of 43 medical schools responded to the questionnaire (60% response rate), 31 out of the 36 addressed Network: TUFH members (86%) and 12 out of 36 addressed non-Network: TUFH schools (33%). Out of all 43 respondents 39 (91%) had implemented CBE in their curricula. Opinions of Network: TUFH and non-Network: TUFH schools on the framework and the generic objectives were not significantly different. Out of the 21 proposed objectives, 17 were scored as relevant by 75% or over of all responders and one out of the four objectives considered to be less relevant by the responders was deleted. A framework to develop generic CBE objectives and a derived set of 21 objectives were modified based on input by 43 medical schools residing in developing countries distributed all over the globe. The outcome is a validated set of 20 generic objectives for CBE programmes in developing countries.