Advances in Medical Education and Practice (Jan 2018)
Problem-based learning in primary care at University of Ribeirão Preto (UNAERP) in Brazil
Abstract
Gustavo Salata Romão, Reinaldo Bulgarelli Bestetti, Lucélio Bernardes CoutoDepartment of Medicine, University of Ribeirão Preto, Ribeirão Preto, BrazilWe read with great interest the excellent paper by Pruitt et al1 who presented a problembased learning (PBL) approach to system-based practice medical education. Because a PBL medical teaching approach in primary care is rare, we would like to report our experience on this strategy as well. We have been using the PBL method in our medical course before the clerkship since 2003. In view of the fact that pre-university education is deficient and totally lecture-based,2 we have had to make some changes to adapt PBL to our educational reality, mainly testing application (multiple-choice questions) before, and some lectures following, the reporting phase of tutorial sessions.3,4 However, we had not used PBL in primary care until 2016. In Brazil, the Unified Health System provides universal health coverage for more than 170,000,000 people in a public decentralized and hierarchical network of primary, secondary, and tertiary health care services. A key part of this increasing access to health care is the Family Health Program (FHP). Unfortunately, the system is underfunded, and the health professionals are not sufficiently prepared to work in such a complex health system. Because of this, we have been implementing system-based practice in our medical course in a PBL environment since 2016.View the original paper by Pruitt and colleagues.
