Primary health care teaching to postgraduate public health students, comparison of two models: A natural experiment

BACKGROUND: Primary health care as an approach forms an integral part of any public health curricula. The knowledge regarding primary health care can be delivered to public health trainee through conventional or the modular teaching models. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to observe whether there was any difference in the summative assessment scores between two different modalities of teaching primary health care to public health trainee at School of Public Health, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India. METHODS: The present study was a natural experiment. Students of Masters of Public Health (MPH) and MD (Community Medicine) formed two natural groups. They were taught by modular and conventional methods of teaching respectively. A total of seven MPH students and nine MD students, participated in the study. RESULTS: Overall summative assessment score among MPH students was 63.9 ± 10.0 in comparison to 61.1 ± 10.9 among MD students. The difference in total scores was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: We conclude that approaching a complex topic such as primary health care requires a mix of both modular and non-modular teaching to maximize outputs.