Beyond Traditional Health Training: Experience of Popular Education in Medical Training

ABSTRACT In recent years medical training has been at the heart of different discussions and policies. Despite the evolutionary process of Brazilian medical education, whether in its curricular or methodological aspects, there are still important gaps to be filled, in order to guarantee an comprehensive and humanistic education. It has become évident that transforming the methodologies and the curriculum does not go far enough; it is fundamental to introduce students into spaces of reflection, that can have a positive affect on their «existential worlds”. One possible tool for building such spaces would be university extension programs, understood as an interdisciplinary, educational, cultural, scientific and political process capable of fostering interaction between the University and the most diverse sectors of society, transforming them mutually. Thus, this article presents and analyzes the impacts of an extensionist action, based on Popular Health Education in a settlement in innerstate Bahia, on the training of medical students, according to their perceptions. Content analysis was applied to the field diaries and semi-structured interviews of ten medical students participating in the program «Social participation and the right to health: intersectoral planning, art, social mobilization and popular education in a settlement in Bahia». The results indicate that the traditional teaching of medicine often neglects the human being in all its potential, as well as its social, political and cultural context. The curriculum offers little possibility for real community-based practice; practical activities are often confined to the hospital setting; there are few opportunities for exchanges and dialogues with students from other undergraduate courses. Thus, it is concluded that university extension can favor important processes of transformation in medical education by enabling a broad understanding of individuals, their relationships and their ways of living in the world.