Abstract:
Introduction:
The literature on medical education has been revealing that medical students experience difficulties with the overload of activities and tasks, culminating in stress and depression, often associated with the challenges brought by the Problem-Based Learning pedagogical model.
Objective:
to report the results of two therapeutic interventions developed with students, focusing on problem situations faced in the medical course and with the purpose of promoting well-being.
Method:
Qualitative and exploratory research. A scenario was created for psychodramatic experiences with horses. The convenience sample consisted of two medical students, who met the inclusion criterion ‘participate in the Academic Center’ of the course. They acted as protagonist-patient-participants. The interventions with each participant were individual, and acted at the intrapsychic and systemic levels, considering here the medical education system. Besides the dramatization itself on the stage-arena, there were open semi-structured interviews, as a warm-up and sharing of results, on the day of the intervention and six months later.
Results:
The protagonist-patient-participants are female, from two different universities which both offer a curriculum centered on Problem-Based Learning, and were in the 6th and 8th semesters of the course. The ‘suffering-dramas in relation to the course’ chosen by each protagonist-patient-participant were ‘tutoring competition’ and ‘overload’. The dramatization was effective in promoting awareness of its protagonism in relation to the problem and the possibility of acquiring new spontaneous-creative responses, which was verified six months later, in the protagonist-patient-participants’ report. The therapeutic work promoted improved student well-being and performance in academic, personal and social activities, preparing the students to be the most humanized professionals, as sought by the SUS.
Conclusion:
The results suggest that the use of “Therapeutic Intervention with Horses” can help medical schools to comply with National Curriculum Guidelines, through health promotion among medicine students.
Keywords:
Medical Students; Health Promotion; Psychodrama; Equine-Assisted Therapy