Building Community With Community: Collaborative Reflections on the Rural and Urban Community Orienting Experience (RUCOE).

Abstract

Short-term intensive orientation programs have existed at medical schools for decades, yet there is very little published on these programs and the impact they have on medical students, particularly those at the very beginning of their medical training. The annual Rural/Urban Community Orienting Experience (RUCOE) at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine is a three-day immersive orientation before the start of the academic year with the goals to build community among students interested in underserved practice, faculty, and staff; foster a curious mind as a practitioner-scholar; and develop a reflective practice. While the deficits and challenges in rural and underserved communities are often obvious to outsiders, the RUCOE intentionally redirects students to see the health of a community, i.e., the assets within rural and urban underserved communities, parallel to the Osteopathic focus on finding health and supporting the body's ability to self-heal. During the RUCOE, students, faculty, and staff learn from community members in both rural and urban underserved communities via structured discussion groups. Program components include didactic presentations, tours of a federally qualified health center and a rural critical access hospital, interactive group activities, a service project, and continuous reflection in action via writing. This article takes an unconventional approach to describing the meaning and significance of an educational program in medical school. Our collaborative reflection on our written reflections paralleled the democratic process employed in the RUCOE; we attempted to dismantle the typical hierarchical scholarship process and include students from the very beginning in envisioning what this article should be. Our singular and simple goal was to share our story of the impact the RUCOE program had on us. Several patterns became clear as we read and discussed our reflections: (1) Shared Values Foster Community, (2) Vulnerability Builds Community, (3) Communities Teach Us, and (4) Envisioning A Professional Future. The common thread tying them together is a developing sense of community and belonging and enduring impact on personal and professional growth. The RUCOE created important connections and bonds between students, between students and faculty, and between students and the underserved communities and organizations we visit. The RUCOE set the stage for students to enter their first year of medical school with humanizing perspectives, a call to listen, to center patient's stories, and with reinforcement of their "Why."