Community partners’ experiences with medical students’ service-learning activities

Background: The perspectives of community partners about their experiences working with medical students and how service-learning experiences affect the communities they serve remains understudied. Objective: This study addressed gaps in the literature by reporting on in-depth interviews conducted with community partners who participated in a well-established medical school service-learning programme. Design: A qualitative study was undertaken using semi-structured interviews and an edited coding strategy. Setting: A convenience sample was recruited from a database of organisations working with the medical school’s service-learning organisation. Method: Between 2017 and 2020, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with community-based organisation partners who worked with medical students through a service-learning initiative in an urban, underserved area of New Jersey, USA. The authors coded transcripts and identified themes after extensive reading, reflection and team discussion of transcripts and coded text. Authors confirmed thematic saturation after 20 interviews with 21 participants representing 18 different agencies. Results: Three main themes were developed: (1) medical students as role models, (2) community partners’ role in shaping medical student education, and (3) reciprocity between community-based organisations and the service-learning programme. Participants found that medical students connected well with young clients and motivated them to pursue higher education or healthcare careers especially when they had a shared ethnic or cultural background. Community partners helped medical students better understand ethnically and socioeconomically diverse communities from a whole-person perspective. Participants described collaborative learning and reciprocity between the service-learning programme and community-based organisations as a ‘win-win’ situation – with clients, the organisation and medical students all benefitting. Conclusion: Findings illustrate the importance of reciprocity between medical students and community partners. Incorporating partners in the design and evaluation of service-learning programmes is essential to understanding how community and academic health centres can better collaborate to promote health equity.