Standards

Section 1. Institutional Setting and Governance

IS-1. The chief official of an international healthcare education program must be appointed or recognized by the governing officials or board of the institution.

IS-2. The chief official and faculty of an international healthcare education program must be qualified by education and experience to provide leadership in international healthcare education.

IS-3. A written policy must exist explicitly describing the authority and responsibility for matters related to the international healthcare education program among the chief official of the international healthcare education program, the faculty, and the directors of the other associated programs or institutions.

Section 2. Students

S-1. The program must identify its student learner capacity and strategies to meet the number of student learner demands.

S-2. A written policy must exist explicitly describing strategies to promote and reporting requirements of student diversity enrolled into the international healthcare educational program.

Educational Objectives

EO-1. The chief official and faculty of an international healthcare education program must define the objectives of its program. The objectives must serve as guides for establishing curriculum content and provide the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the program.

EO-2. The objectives of an international healthcare education program must be stated in outcome-based terms that allow assessment of student learner progress in developing the competencies of the profession.

EO-3. The objectives of an international healthcare education program must be distributed in written form to all student learners, to the faculty and others with direct responsibilities for resident physician education and assessment.

EO-4. Defined methods must be designed and implemented to assess learner attainment of objectives.



Section 3. Curricular Content

CC-1. An international healthcare education program must include instructional opportunities for active learning, critical analysis, and independent study to foster the skills necessary for lifelong learning.

CC-2. An international healthcare education program must ensure that student learners attain basic knowledge of, at a minimum, the following core subjects:

• International Public Health – training to assess the major determinants of health and leading causes of morbidity and mortality, and to identify effective interventions to promote health and prevent death and disability.
• Diseases Of Poverty – preparing to prevent, diagnose and treat the leading diseases associated with poverty in low-resource communities
• Healthcare Cross-Cultural Competency – equipping student learners to ensure that healthcare interventions are culturally appropriate and utilize culturally sensitive methods of communication.
• International Health Leadership – equipping student learners to work with local healthcare systems and healthcare professionals as partners on a health leadership team to plan and implement effective public heath programming.
• Disaster Management – training student learners to mitigate disaster risks and appropriately respond to disaster events.
• International Healthcare Research – equipping student learners with the basic scientific and ethical principles of health research and how to apply field methods for collecting and interpreting data.

CC-3. An international public health education program must provide resident physicians with access to relevant and up to date global health information.



Section 4. Service-Learning Content

SLC-1. An international healthcare education program must ensure that student learners provide a genuine service contribution by aligning their learning priorities with the needs of the communities and facilities they serve.

SLC-2. A suitable setting for an international healthcare service-learning experience is one that provides healthcare to people who are most disadvantaged – commonly due to cultural differences, language barriers, lack of access to adequate education and healthcare, geographic isolation, or insufficient financial resources. Such a setting may be located in a low-resource nation or among similarly disadvantaged people in a wealthier nation.

SLC-3. Such supervised service-learning activities should include at least 140 contact hours. This may be accomplished through 4 continuous weeks of service-learning activities. Alternatively, shorter weeks of service-learning activities over broader periods of time may be acceptable to provide for more community integration and continuity of learning.

SLC-4. An international healthcare service-learning sites selected must have adequate facilities and contingencies for communication, transportation, accommodations, safety, emergency healthcare, and evacuation, including appropriate insurance coverage.

SLC-5. An orientation shall be provided for student learners beginning their international healthcare service-learning experiences that provides, at a minimum, responsibilities of health care personnel, personal safety, and emotional wellbeing.

SLC-6. Supervision of student learners in international healthcare service-learning experiences must be provided. Student learners shall not engage in activities for which they are not trained.

SLC-7. Supervisors for international healthcare service-learning activities should be qualified by appropriate licensure, education, and experience to guide international healthcare education.

SLC-8. An international healthcare education program must have written and signed affiliation agreements in place with its service-learning affiliates that define, at a minimum, the responsibilities of each party related to the educational program.

SLC-9. International healthcare service-learning experiences must be periodically evaluated with regard to their impact upon the health and healthcare system of host communities.

SLC-10. If the service-learning experience includes research, the research project must be approved and monitored in accordance with the both the student learners home and host institution policies and procedures for research.

Section 5. Learner Evaluation

SE-1. An international healthcare education program must use a system for the assessment of student learners achievement throughout the program that measures the attainment of the expected competencies.

SE-2. Student learners progress toward the expected competencies must be communicated to the student learner periodically throughout the course of learning, allowing an opportunity for student learner feedback and sufficient time for any required remediation.

Section 6. Program and Progress

PE-1. The chief officer and faculty of an international healthcare education program must develop and implement an ongoing plan for evaluation of the program and faculty that periodically collects identified measureable outcome data to evaluate the program and the extent to which its educational objectives are being met. In instances where the program is assessed as deficient, a plan for improvements must be developed, implemented, and evaluated.

PE-2. Student learners are given a formal opportunity to participate in evaluation of the program and faculty effectiveness.