THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS OF HEMATOLOGY IN THE TRANSITION TO THE MEDICAL INTERNSHIP IN THREE YEARS

Abstract

Objectives: To characterize the teaching-learning process and student feedback on hematology in a 3-year medical internship context. Material and methods: Cross-sectional, descriptive, and analytical study carried out in the first semester of 2024 with 74 students in the eighth period of a public state university in Brazil. At our school, the deployment of the 3-year internship began in 2021. Hematology is considered a “nucleus”and carries out a sixty-hour program over four months in twelve sectors of two university hospitals. The standard week consists of hemotherapy practices, laboratory tests, and hematology (inter-consultation, outpatient, and infirmary) for groups of 4 students. A total of 16 weekly dialogued lectures with hematological clinical case presentations and discussions were planned for the entire class in an auditorium. A learning management system (Google Classroom) is made available with a script of activities, teaching material, a short text, and a report on practices. The short text is written feedback from students on theoretical activities. An electronic health record (RES Acad) is used for clinical case discussion. A remote survey with a semi-structured questionnaire, with a Likert scale of 1 to 5, is carried out on general data, infrastructure, attitude, content, methodology, and evaluation. Local or remote weekly meetings were scheduled for planning, monitoring, and modulating activities totaling 23. The social networks WhatsApp and Telegram are used to facilitate quick communication between participants. Results: In the 2024-1 semester, all the activities were carried out, and the team had 20 members: teachers (2), preceptors (5), monitors (2), and collaborators (11). Of the total number of students, 66 (89%), median age (22), and gender distribution (1:1) responded to the questionnaire. In evaluating the 25 sub-items, the sum of levels 4 and 5 of the scale in percentages were, respectively: technical knowledge (100), content level (97), content relevance (97), leveling classes (96), interpersonal relationships (96), learning management system (96), teaching material (96), teaching didactics (96), outpatient clinic (95), teamwork (94), dialogued lecture (94), auditorium infrastructure (94), student motivation (92), content integration (91), RES Acad software (89), discussion of clinical cases (88), general organization (88), individual work (85), transfusion practice (80), short text (73), infirmary (70), collection of exams (64) and laboratory tests (55). The grade given by the students in Hematology was nine on a scale of 1 to 10. Discussion: Four activities received a lower rating. However, the short text is relevant because it requires greater attention, reflection, and feedback for the formative evaluation and modulation of activities by students and teachers. On the other hand, two standard weeks are planned for the following semester, including adjustments to the collection room for students and laboratory practices focused on hematological examination. Conclusion: The study presented the dynamics of the Hematology component in its insertion in the 3-year internship, showed high student satisfaction with the proposal, and identified activities that require improvement. The recent pandemic caused changes in scenarios, methodologies, and technologies in medical education. Therefore, knowing initiatives used in different teaching-learning contexts is necessary to face this global reality.