TEACHING-SERVICE INTEGRATION IN THE TRAINING OF PROFESSIONALS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEMS

Abstract Teaching-service integration, understood through the combined work of students, teachers and workers in a practice setting, has as its goals excellency in professional training and quality of the work in health. The goal of the study is to analyze, through the perception of the students, the teaching-service integration, which takes place during the undergraduate Pharmacy studies. It is a quantitative study conducted in 2018, and characterized as a cross-sectional survey in which a structured questionnaire was applied. A total of 155 undergraduate Pharmacy students, enrolled in three different universities, a private university and two public ones, located in the metropolitan region of the city of Porto Alegre, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, participated in the study. The results found indicate the potentialities of the internships in public health settings for the training of Pharmacy professionals who are more confident regarding their future work at the Brazilian Unified Health System. The data obtained reveal the variable age of the students as a relevant factor for the acknowledgement of the competencies needed for the job. Such findings may contribute to the process of development or reformulation of the syllabi of the Pharmacy undergraduate courses, with the goal of training professionals who are critical, thoughtful and knowledgeable regarding the local health reality.