20 Years of Post-graduate courses at IMIP

EDITORIAL EDITORIAL

20 Years of Post-graduate courses at IMIP

João Guilherme Bezerra Alves

Coordinator of Postgraduate Program in Mother and Child Health at the Instituto de Medicina Integral Prof. Fernando Figueira. Rua dos Coelhos, 300. Boa Vista. Recife, PE, Brasil. CEP: 50.070-550

Training human resources in health, with its high level of theoretical knowledge, skills and ethical positions, in a way that is appropriate for the local setting, was always a concern of Prof. Fernando Figueira, from he set up the Instituto de Medicina Integral Prof. Fernando Figueira (IMIP) in 1960. His dream was to build a model degree college in the field of health, based at IMIP, capable of meeting the health needs of local populations, especially those most in need, and that this model could be replicated in areas with a similar profile. This dream, which was realized by his disciples in the past decade with the creation of the Faculdade Pernambucana de Saúde (FPS), went through various phases before becoming reality.

Since IMIP was founded was home to the pediatrics module of both medical schools in the State of Pernambuco - the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) and the Universidade de Pernambuco (UPE) – at both of which Prof. Fernando Figueira was professor of this subject. It was also his initiative that gave rise to the IMIP, the first medical residence program in pediatrics in the North and Northeast regions of Brazil. Sticking to his vocation for teaching, and with pediatrics programs were already being run for fourth and sixth year medical students and medical residents, in 1973, this Institution ran, jointly with the UFPE, the first Master's course in Pediatrics. This course was run by the IMIP until 1983 when it was transferred to the UFPE.

The graduate school in health that Prof. Fernando Figueira had dreamt of for so long began to take shape in the late 1980s, with an exchange of ideas with his great friend, Prof. G. J. Ebrahim, who taught the Master's course at the London University's Institute of Child Health. Prof. Fernando Figueira followed Prof. G. J. Ebrahim's idea of first investing in training up a very high quality teaching team and then setting up a graduate school in the field of health. Some assistant teachers at IMIP had already attended Prof. Ebrahim's post-graduation program, while others were appointed to strengthen the teaching team. In 1993, with the collaboration of Malaquias Batista Filho and Bertoldo Kruse on the course design, the course was promptly approved by the CAPES, and the IMIP's post-graduate program in mother and child health began, at that time the first in Latin America to follow the academic model of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In this model developed by the IMIP, the established goal of providing excellent quality graduation courses would be fully achieved with the training of teaching staff for each course program. IMIP's post-graduation course was set up, however, with the aim, in principle, of training Masters and Doctors to better meet the needs of their undergraduates. According to this model, post-graduate training involves more than being a mere researcher; it involves being a teaching researcher, with a strong connection between postgraduate and undergraduate degrees. This concern with teaching has been kept up over the past 20 years and the IMIP was the first postgraduate program in the field of health to use the problem-based learning methodology in its Master's and Doctorate courses. In 2008, with the introduction of this new curriculum, guided by the planning, development and transmission of research, the program aimed to train teachers better in active teaching models and to acquire greater competence in the production of scientific articles.

Obviously, teacher training is not restricted to the IMIP graduation program. Over these 20 years, its postgraduate program has awarded 216 Master's and Doctorates, many of them to candidates from other parts of Brazil who have now gone back to their home regions to teach, research, provide care and manage mother and child healthcare. The IMIP postgraduate program has thus helped to train high quality human resources for teaching, research and management throughout the Northeast region of Brazil.

Finally, we cannot forget that, running alongside the academic and scientific development of the institution, it has created and sponsored the Revista do IMIP (1986-2000) and Revista Brasileira de Saúde Materno Infantil (RBSMI) (2001 – the present day), both with a strong reputation for publishing work relevant to the medical and collective health communities. It should also be remembered that the Revista do IMIP had the opportunity to publish the first reported case of AIDS in Pernambuco and the seventh in Brazil, while the RBSMI, which is contained in 13 international bibliographies, responded in 2007, to an invitation from the Council of Science Editors, The Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development, to publish five articles, two by authors from the IMIP and three by international authors.

These are just a few of the important achievements of the brilliant Prof. Fernando Figueira.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 July 2013
• Date of issue
  June 2013