Extensionist experience of undergraduate students in medicine as part of the Mais Médicos para o Brasil [more doctors for Brazil] program

Jucier Gonçalves Júnior,Sarah Cavalcante Brandão,Emmanuela Quental Callou De Sá,Sandra Barreto Fernandes Silva

doi:10.5712/rbmfc16(43)2528

Abstract

Problem: The new National Curriculum Guidelines of Undergraduate Medicine in Brazil propose that academics have contact with the health system and its users at an early stage. However, practical activities in undergraduate courses proved to be insufficient for the adequate development of this new perspective. Consequently, the experiences of university extension have the proposal to fill in this gap. Method: This article aimed to report the experiences of the scholarship holders of the Extension Project in Family and Community Medicine - ProMFC (Projeto de Extensão em Medicina de Família e Comunidade) under the More Doctors for Brazil Program – PMMB (Programa Mais Médicos para o Brasil). This is a qualitative, experience-type study with lexical and content analysis from the software IRaMutTeQ, version 0.7 alpha 2, to establish an association between the terms used in the discourse of the ProMFC. Results: The opportunity to immerse in environments in which students can learn about the problems and share the daily life of the assisted community was highlighted. The exchange of knowledge and experiences among students, physicians working in Primary Health Care (fellows of the PMMB, supervisors and tutors) and local managers was also relevant, as well as the students’ ability to develop/train skills, such as teamwork, assertive communication, and health planning. Conclusion: The PMMB, tutored and integrated into an extension project, the ProMFC, is an alternative that, although embryonic, has many potentialities, as it allows the extensionists to be early inserted into the Attention Primary Health Care.

Highlights

After 32 years since the creation of the Single Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS), public health in Brazil is experiencing one of the most challenging periods
In chart 1, among the students’ impressions about the activities practiced by the ProMFC in 2017, the opportunity to immerse themselves into environments in which they can identify and share the community’s concerns, doubts, daily life and ways of experiencing reality is highlighted
The knowledge and experiences exchanged between students and doctors working in Primary Health Care (PHC) (PMMB fellows and tutors) and local managers built the possibility of training skills such as: teamwork, assertive communication and work organization when planning and executing, under supervision, large events, and assisting in the PMMB locoregional workshops

Summary

Introduction

After 32 years since the creation of the Single Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS), public health in Brazil is experiencing one of the most challenging periods. The scarcity and poor distribution of the qualified workforce are global concerns, but developing countries are especially affected. This standard limits the accessibility to health services in rural and remote areas.[2,3] the qualified construction of SUS requires significant investments in the structuring of services and in the distribution of health professionals, and in their training, valuation and establishment. There is a historical gap in the training process of health professionals. It is necessary to deeply reflect on the epistemological assumptions in health, which must be based on social determinants, the needs of the population and the locoregional epidemiological profile.[4]

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Discussion

Conclusion