Transição Paradigmática na Educação Médica

Abstract

The movement of change in medical education, which has been expanding and gaining relevance in the 21st century, has provoked a rupture with the traditional teaching in force and has imposed the adoption of active methodologies, to adapt the medical curricula to the health needs of the population. Amongst the different modalities of active methodologies proposed, the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) has been highlighted in medicine courses. This methodology displaces teaching centered on transmission and reproduction of knowledge for teaching in which the student assumes responsibility for their learning, in an active and critical way. This change of paradigm, in addition to requiring changes in structures and curricula, implies a new role for the student, as well as for the teacher, revealing, throughout his application, difficulties that may lead to the erosion of this methodological innovation. This study aimed to analyze the medical students' perception on the transition from traditional teaching taught in High School to PBL adopted in higher education. An exploratory, qualitative study was carried out with students from the first semester of the medical course of two private colleges and a public university in the north of Minas Gerais. Data collection was performed through the conduction of three focus groups. The data were analyzed using the Thematic Analysis technique. Three common thematic nuclei between the groups and their subcategories emerged from the speeches: 1) Recognizing the characteristics of the traditional method: perceiving the teacher as the center of the teaching-learning process and identifying fragilities of the traditional method; 2) Realizing a new learning methodology: Recognizing the proposals and educational advances in PBL and identifying a new role for the student; 3) Experiencing the paradigm rupture: Identifying the challenges and attempting to overcome difficulties. Data analysis showed that students perceive the weaknesses of traditional teaching and its implications in their learning process. The students' view of PBL is positive, but contradictory, since they since they feel they miss lectures, as in traditional courses. This result translates the anguish of a paradigmatic transition, but on the other hand, alerts to the possibility of misconceptions in conducting PBL, especially in the role assumed by the tutors. In the view of the participants, the rupture with traditional teaching imposes challenges, such as: developing autonomy, self-managing learning, managing time efficiently, dealing with varied sources of information, learning to learn, delimiting content to be studied, insecurity to present the knowledge in the tutorial session, among others. To overcome these challenges, students use independent strategies by themselves, without institutional aid. It is suggested to create orientation services, to develop learning resources and to accompany the student as one of the focuses of attention to minimize the difficulties faced by students during this transition period.