COLLECTIVE MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS: BREAKING PARADIGMS AND PROMOTING AUTONOMY.

Introduction/Objective: The medical care, mostly, take place as individual medical appointments, guided by the biomedical model of health, causing a break in the promotion of autonomy of the individual on its health-disease process. Aiming to build a new paradigm, we have the implementation of the collective medical appointment, where the care relations are intensified. The present article aims to report the experience of the students of the third year of medicine at the State University of Santa Cruz (UESC) in the development of the collective medical appointment in a Family Health Unit (USF). Methodology: The collective medical appointments constitutes an informal discussion on the Systemic Arterial Hypertension (SAH), with a group of 6-10 hypertensive patients. Patients introduced themselves, reported their complaints and the students headed a discussion about SAH and, finally, the individual demands of the patients were attended. Results/Conclusion: The collective medical appointment promotes an exchange at the professional/user relationship where is stimulated the self-care through dialogue among professionals and patients with common interests. It works as a health promotion strategy based on the methodology of problematization that promotes the autonomy of the individual, making it active in its own health-disease process. This practice enables the consolidation of the new model of health care. Lastly, the inclusion of this activity as a inherent practice to graduation, allowed the students to recognize its impacts on the population health and has aroused the interest to continue this activity in their professional practice.