Daisy Project-Margarita is a pilot educational program offered in a voluntary basis to medical students and is operated in cooperation with HelMSIC.

The project's goals

The project's goals are:

• Exposure of medical students to the actual conditions of medical practice in the community
• Combination and insertion of theoretical skills in the management of the population s health problems.
• Sensitization and development of skills concerning the clinical approach and communication with the patient and his/her relatives as bio-psycho-social human beings.
• Acknowledgement of the physician s role as a whole, not only as a therapist but also as a mean for the prevention of illness and health promotion, as a researcher with social conscience.
• Development of a scientific, critic spirit combined with intra-scientific cooperation.

tructure

The program consists of:

• The team responsible for the education in communication skills
• The areas of action

Medical students practice knowledge and skills they acquire working in the team, in various areas of action. Reversely, inside the team, they work on experiences they get from the areas of action.

The team responsible for the education in communication skills

This team is the core of the project. All participants watch the scheduled meetings. The team faces the following: Communication between doctor and patient, Relations and communication among the paramedical-nursing staff, Sex differences in health communication, Information gathering, Ways of management of difficult patients, Bad news announcement, Offering emotional support, Protection of the health worker from stress, Ways of management of patients with specific diseases. The teams have both seminary and practical characteristics. Students work using role playing, video with feedback and patients in simulation models.

Health Intervention in Secondary Schools

Students are educated in planning and running health promotion acts and acquire special skills in the specific subject of each act (anti-smoking, sexual behavior etc.) as well as experiences participating in acts performed inside the community (e.g. in schools).

Research in Social Medicine

Students are educated in research techniques concerning health care and take part energetically in research programs. Transformation of questions of clinical practice into research hypotheses, writing research papers, methods of data collection are included.

Nurse Aid

Students come in contact with the actual work of a nurse inside a hospital. The goal is to comprehend the role that other health professionals play, to acquire specific nursing skills and to learn how to communicate with the patient and his/her relatives.

The role of the physician inside the community

Students take part in the function of Health Care Centers inside the community, aiming at searching the population s health needs, preventing illness, the cure and rehabilitation of chronic health problems or emergencies inside the Health Care Center as well as at home.

Evolution of the project

Daisy Project-Magarita was created step-by-step in the city of Thessaloniki by HelMSIC in cooperation with the Hygiene Laboratory of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 2003 it was voted as an official international program of IFMSA and as a basis for similar projects of medical schools around the world. At the same time, in Thessaloniki, the project was slightly reformed, so the nurse assistant and the physician s role inside the community merged into back home from the hospital.

Stand-point in its evolution was the insertion of the project in the schedule of studies of the majority of the faculties of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, that eventually proves its great success.

Today, the peripheral activity of "Health Intervention in Secondary Schools" is still running in a pilot voluntary level, in cooperation with professional partners from all other peripheral activities.