Integration Seminars as Pedagogical Devices for Curricular Innovation in Health Education: Student Perceptions of Patients

ABSTRACT

This documentary exploratory research project with a qualitative approach aimed to understand how dental students are being trained in terms of healthcare, by means of an interdisciplinary teaching activity held in the second year of dental school. A retrospective survey was performed from the material produced by the students during the third semester of the dentistry course at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, by means of the IV Integration Seminar held in 2006-2013. The analysis corpus consisted of reports featuring patient monitoring and narratives. We analyzed 95 patient case reports and 67 narratives using the thematic analysis method on Bardin content. Analysis of the material resulted in 17 meaning units/emerging categories. The inclusion of narratives in the Integration Seminar as a methodological strategy for health education facilitated the qualification of reports and brought students closer to the human beings under care, by means of exposing the students to the patients’ chief complaint, life history and subjective factors. The specific experiences of this study as well as those of other Brazilian educational institutions suggest that innovative and integrated curricula in the healthcare field must be implemented on a permanent basis.

Higher Education; Curriculum; Teaching; Dental Education; Medical Education