3D printing in the physician-patient relationship, experience report on the integration between education, innovation and care

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

In the literature, several articles demonstrate patient satisfaction and better understanding of the information transmitted by the medical team, with the aid of three-dimensional pieces. Education and health are inseparable and interdependent practices, they have always been articulated, and considered crucial elements in the action process of health professionals. Thus, teachers and students of the medicine course at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco created a university extension project that aimed at the use of anatomical models printed in 3D, for the education of patients in the orthopedics and traumatology outpatient clinic.

Experience Report:

Over the six months of the project, 77 patients were assisted and the project employed the work of 3 teachers and 18 undergraduate students, totaling 98 people involved in the project. The actions were divided into 2 blocks: the first consisted of training the students and, in the second, the students visited the outpatient clinic, accompanied by a specialist physician in charge and used pieces printed by the students themselves, to guide the patients regarding their respective condition and provided guidance on therapy using these printed pieces.

Discussion:

the possibility of using this tool as an aid in medical communication opens up a vast horizon of application of 3D printing in health education. This, in turn, favors the improvement of health promotion in less developed regions, since this interaction between the health team and the community allows the promotion, protection and recovery of health, based on a horizontal dialogue, valuing and respecting the users of the health system, aiming to make them an agent and protagonist of the health and disease process.

Conclusion:

It can be concluded, therefore, that extension projects such as this one have enormous potential to generate impacts on medicine, the academic community and the assisted population, especially the less educated ones.

Keywords:
Health Communication; Physician-Patient Relationship; Health Education; Three-Dimensional Printing; Community-Institutional Relationship