Knowledge about the Medical Residency among students of the Centro Universitário do Estado do Pará

ABSTRACT Medical residency (MR) is a postgraduate course in which learning is based mainly on practice focused on a particular medical specialty. Once the medical student decides to become a specialist, it is important to understand how the selection process works, the number of vacancies available, the steps they need to go through, whether they need to enroll in a preparatory course for the residency, which specialties exist in each service, and the negative and positive aspects of each one, among other inherent aspects. This study aims to identify the knowledge of MR among medical students of the Centro Universitário do Estado do Pará (CESUPA), the main sources of information available on the subject, and their gaps in this knowledge. An observational cross-sectional, exploratory, descriptive, analytical study was carried out with 259 students of the Cesupa medical school. It was observed that 99.6% of the participants hoped to enroll in a medical residency, with the majority stating that they have low and medium knowledge about the subject (49% and 42% respectively). More than 60% had already done some research on the topic, the Internet being the most used source of information. Only 6.6% of participants correctly knew the number of mandatory steps in the selection process, and 89.6% considered it necessary to take a preparatory course. It is concluded there are still gaps in medical students’ knowledge about medical residency programs, and this subject should be further explored in the academic environment, through interventions that will broaden students’ horizons, enabling them to become more apt and critical when it comes to deciding where to take the MR, and how to prepare for it.