The teaching of palliative care in Medical schools in Salvador, Brazil: document analysis

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

Palliative care is a multidisciplinary practice that aims to promote quality of life in chronic, degenerative, and life-threatening health conditions. The approval of report no. 265/2022 included palliative care in the National Curriculum Guidelines for undergraduate medicine. However, many colleges have not yet adapted their curricula to address these competencies. In this context, it is questioned how the teaching of palliative care is carried out in medical schools in Salvador-BA.

Objective:

To analyze documentary evidence of the teaching of palliative care in medical schools in Salvador.

Methodology:

This is a qualitative, exploratory study, based on document analysis. The corpus is composed of the curricular matrices, syllabi of the disciplines and curricula of the teaching staff at the 6 medical schools of Salvador-BA. Data was collected between December 2022 and May 2023. In the curricular matrices, the presence of a specific palliative care module, its class hours and methodology were investigated. For the teaching staff, the presence of qualified professionals in the area was investigated. For the syllabus, the presence of central themes of palliative care was verified, established by a priori categories and the respective class hours.

Results:

Only 1 of the 6 medical courses has a specific curricular module for the teaching of palliative care, with a theoretical methodology and 30 hours of class hours. Information was obtained from the teaching staff of three schools, of which only two have specialized palliative care professionals. In terms of the syllabus, “communication skills” was the category with the most Registration Units (RU), “Concepts in palliative care” had the third highest number of RU and “Assessment and management of painful symptoms” had the lowest number of RU.

Conclusion:

Important gaps in medical education in Salvador can be perceived, with the absence of a specific curricular component on palliative care in most schools. Deficiencies were found in the teaching of topics such as management of painful symptoms, eligibility criteria for palliative care, areas of activity and communication of bad news. However, valuing the debate on the concepts and principles of palliative care is a good opportunity to adapt the curriculum to the new National Curriculum Guidelines.

Keywords:
Palliative Care; Medical Education; Qualitative Research