MORE DOCTORS PROGRAM AND NATIONAL SYLLABUS GUIDELINES: IMPROVEMENTS AND STENGTHENING OF THE HEALTH SYSTEM

Abstract In many countries there are initiatives of adapting the medical training to the needs of the health systems. In Brazil, the More Doctors Program (Programa Mais Médicos, in Portuguese) introduced the most recent changes, establishing a new regulatory framework in the medical training, which is expressed in the National Syllabus Guidelines, emphasizing the development of professional abilities in primary health care. In the present study, we tried to analyze the social representations of medicine students about the work in primary health care within the context of the implementation of the aforementioned guidelines. In order to do so, 149 medicine students from ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ public courses in the Northeastern region of Brazil answered a sociodemographic questionnaire and a free evocation script in the second semester of 2017. The results show a student profile that corresponds to the ‘first university student generation’ of the ‘new schools’. In these schools, the social representations of the medicine students are more in line with the new guidelines, with an emphasis on the evocation of terms such as ‘bond,’ ‘responsibility’ and ‘community.’ In the ‘traditional’ schools, the terms that stood out the most were ‘underappreciation,’ and ‘precariousness,’ which suggests that these students do not have enough experience in primary health care. We hope that the innovative experiences that were analyzed can be multiplied and deepened in the radicality needed for the strengthening of the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde, in Portuguese), with training that is in line with the social needs.