PRIMARY HEALTH CARE INITIATION: UFMGS EXPERIENCE IN INTRODUCING STUDENTS IN PRIMARY CYCLE OPPORTUNISTICALLY

Introduction: Primary Health Care (PHC) medical teaching should be longitudinal, allowing learning from service, integrating teaching core to clinical practice. In 2014 second half, UFMG’s School of Medicine implemented a new curriculum, resulting from an extensive multi-departmental process guided by Medical Curriculum Guidelines from Ministries of Health and Education. In this scenario “Primary Health Care Initiation” I/II/III disciplines were deployed to second to fourth periods. This paper describes the experience in the first three semesters. Objective: To enable PHC active experiences and student’s criticism, encouraging investigation of aspects of the social determination of the health-disease process, the PHC attributes, the role of physician in health team and Family Medicine aspects. Results and Conclusion:The pedagogical model balances technical excellence and social relevance, with student-based teaching-learning methods, based on teaching, service, community and other civil society sectors partnerships. Training process moves from hospital biased individual assistance to social, economic and cultural dimensions, providing tools to approach health-disease process. Practice occurs in PHC Units (PHCU) and its territories, bringing together individual and collective health, and six specialties knowledge in an exercise of agreement and detachment pioneers at University. The challenge of the unprecedented presence of students in the health care network in three early semesters in a row and the demand for integration with PHC teams was enabled by the municipal network structure, despite the difficulties of the unpredictable real world. The student’s final evaluation evidenced satisfaction with the disciplines, but specific criticisms about the PHCU teaching structure, difficulty of subjects standardization and the discipline extension.