Singular informal curriculum: electiveness in medical training during the pandemic

Abstract: Introduction: The interruption of teaching activities imposed by the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to analyze the extracurricular study habits of medical students, seeking to understand how the lack of a thematic institutional targeting impacted on medical training during the period of social isolation. Objective: This study aimed to evaluation of the occurrence, themes, and main sources of studies during the period of suspension of classes in the pandemic. Method: Analytical and descriptive study with data collected from a virtual questionnaire applied to medical students of a higher education institution. Result: From the complete suspension of local activities, of the 310 participants, 152 (49.0%) students claimed to have studied topics related to the health sciences and 93 (30.0%) studied topics not related to the health sciences area. Statistically, there was an exclusive preference for one area to another (p