A tool for managing medical students humanistic education

DOI: 10.15343/0104-7809.20103389394

Abstract

Medical undergraduate programs demand great dedication by students and teachers. While teachers need to deal with the
preparation of classes and evaluations, students must what they can to obey deadlines teachers set and to deal, with a huge amount
of ineducation in a relatively short time. Before such an amount of “technical” ineducation, future doctors may distract and lose sight
of the goal that made them choose the medical career: caring for human beings. The result is well known: the market is flooded by
doctors preoccupied in technically managing diseases – something which is undoubtedly importantly – but with little skill to caring for
people. Therefore it is important that students learn to deal with patients, them as human beings and not mere organisms bearing health
disturbances. This skill is not acquired in a classroom during a theoretical class, but we need to expose the student to medical practice
in several pedagogic settings. Humanistic education implies another task for medical teachers: how to value students’ performance or
how to measure how much the student learned about treating patients, guaranteeing that they do not set aside the scientific knowledge
necessary for the practice of the profession? In this context, the program of credits idealized and implemented by SOBRAMFA proposes
a scale for evaluating students’ performance in practical, academic and scientific activities in order to provide an integral education
including all the skills necessary to practice medicine as Science and Art.