{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.013323464100666173, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0014803849000740192, 'mean_word_length': 5.595121951219512, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Perception of Medical Freshmen towards Public Health

The current shift of emphasis from curative to preventive medicine makes community-based medical education of utmost importance. Even though only a small proportion of medical graduates will eventually choose public health as their specialty, a thorough knowledge-base established through robust undergraduate training programmes in community medicine is essential for all practicing doctors. Despite this, the importance and significance of public health are often not fully appreciated,1,2 with more emphasis being placed on hospital-based and curative medicine.The Department of Community Medicine at Pondicherry institute of Medical Sciences took the first year medical students to rural health centres as a part of orientation towards community medicine and explained the students about the activities and functions of Rural Health Training Center (RHTC). This was followed by visit to the field practice area of the RHTC. The students were allowed to interact with the village people and were asked to collect details regarding the socio demographic and health status of the individual and family. Following the visit to the village, the students were asked to fill the questionnaire containing details regarding their perception towards public health, Community Medicine and its activities.