The Medical Student’s Narrative in Primary Health Care Training: Enhancing Learning Spaces Mediated by Digital Technologies

ABSTRACT

Primary Health Care training demands contextualized pedagogical practices that promote active student participation and reflection on learning. From this perspective, digital narratives emerge as an innovative strategy that integrates the art of storytelling using different information and communication digital technology languages, enabling students to express, share, and reflect on their learning experiences. The integration of digital technologies in health education offers work options that are distant from a traditional practice, because resources such as a virtual learning environment, a blog or a social network suggest new ways of interaction and knowledge production. The aim of this study is to analyze the perception of students and their teacher about the contribution of blogs as spaces for the construction of digital narratives in the teaching-learning process, in Primary Health Care training. The study involved semi-structured interviews with nine students and one teacher, from a Medical course discipline at a Brazilian public university. This discipline discusses the teaching of Primary Health Care in the first semesters of the medical course. During one semester, the students produced digital narratives, noting down their thoughts on their contact with the patients/users of the health service, in the community, at different times, and the perspectives related to this Primary Health Care training process. The research data were organized and analyzed following the assumptions of content analysis. The main perceptions of the students and teacher showed they see blogs as spaces for constructing reflective narratives and for encouraging the collective production of knowledge, and also as an interface to promote student dialogue, subjectivity, and creativity. The results of this study corroborate the expectations about the contribution of digital narrative to a pedagogical practice that values the active participation of both educators and students, allowing a dialogical movement in the teaching-learning process and new ways of thinking about education and the role of the subjects involved.

Primary Health Care; Higher education; Educational technology; Personal narratives