A tool for managing medical students humanistic education

Abstract

Medical undergraduate programs demand great dedication by students and teachers. While teachers need to deal with thepreparation of classes and evaluations, students must what they can to obey deadlines teachers set and to deal, with a huge amountof ineducation in a relatively short time. Before such an amount of “technical” ineducation, future doctors may distract and lose sightof the goal that made them choose the medical career: caring for human beings. The result is well known: the market is flooded bydoctors preoccupied in technically managing diseases – something which is undoubtedly importantly – but with little skill to caring forpeople. Therefore it is important that students learn to deal with patients, them as human beings and not mere organisms bearing healthdisturbances. This skill is not acquired in a classroom during a theoretical class, but we need to expose the student to medical practicein several pedagogic settings. Humanistic education implies another task for medical teachers: how to value students’ performance orhow to measure how much the student learned about treating patients, guaranteeing that they do not set aside the scientific knowledgenecessary for the practice of the profession? In this context, the program of credits idealized and implemented by SOBRAMFA proposesa scale for evaluating students’ performance in practical, academic and scientific activities in order to provide an integral educationincluding all the skills necessary to practice medicine as Science and Art.