Seeking to strengthen health education and training centered on community service in Rio Grande do Norte, the Santos Dumont Institute (ISD) receives, during the month of April, medical students from the Multicampi School of Medical Sciences of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte Norte (EMCM/UFRN), headquartered in Caicó. From the subject “Integrated Community Experience”, future health professionals visited the ISD units in Macaíba and participated in an immersion in the services, scientific research and lines of care aimed at the health of people with disabilities and maternal health -childish.

The partnership between ISD and EMCM with Vivencia Integrada à Comunidade started in 2015. The students visit the municipality of Macaíba during the sixth and seventh periods of the course, in modules focused on child health care and child care. women's health. Currently, the members of the discipline visit the Institute to learn about specialized care in pediatrics, with an immersion in the multiprofessional perspective and within the network of care for people with disabilities.

According to Samantha Maranhão, coordinator of health education activities at the ISD, immersion in this scenario is important for a professional practice that is integrated with the principles and guidelines of the SUS, bringing a vision of how the Maternal-Child Health Care Networks and of the person with disabilities can integrate. “It is a scenario of immersion in multidisciplinary practices based on the development of competences, especially in the attitudinal scope, for maternal and child health care and for people with disabilities”, he explains.

Joélia Nogueira, 25, and Rafael Medeiros, 21, sixth period students, visited the ISD for the first time during the Integrated Community Experience and were able to perceive, in the interdisciplinary and multiprofessional service model, the enhancement of the training of health professionals.

“We realize that it is important to know the capabilities of rehabilitation and the professionals who can work in this area, such as speech therapists, occupational therapists, or physiotherapists. And then we realize their importance in this rehabilitation and having this look of identifying and forwarding. The experience broadened our view of the possibilities of providing a resolute rehabilitation”, says Joélia.

Rafael Medeiros points out that, in his view, there is a conception that the medical professional is further removed from interdisciplinary contact, but that the multidisciplinary organization model represents a break from this paradigm.

“For general practitioners, which is what any medical training is recommending, our experience has strengthened the issue of knowing the lines of care, because now we are very confident in referring to other professionals. Here I was also able to broaden my horizons on rehabilitation without limitations on the possibilities, getting to know the research on Parkinson's, electrostimulation and the work of the CER ISD, for example”, expresses Rafael.

For Ana Luiza Oliveira, professor at EMCM and coordinator of Integrated Experience, the insertion of students in the community, from the initial years of graduation, presenting a multidisciplinary perspective, is essential to enhance training and effectively fulfill the social function of the profession.

“The visit to the ISD is a milestone and a culture in the academic life of these students, because they begin to really understand what multidisciplinary and team work is, and they get to know the resoluteness of health care when there is a sum of professions. It is an important step for us to be able to show a service that works in an interprofessional and user-centric way. The perspective is to continue strengthening to exercise the function and social responsibility of the university”, points out professor Ana Luiza Oliveira.

Training for the community

The Integrated Community Experience is seen, for Professor Ana Luiza, as a “longitudinal internship”, which provides, from the beginning of the course, a greater and better understanding of the health needs of the community. For this, students are allocated to public health services in three municipalities outside the metropolitan region of RN: Currais Novos, Santa Cruz and Caicó. There, they remain for the total eight modules of the discipline, collaborating with the health secretariats and workers, and, as the professor reinforces, understanding health work beyond medical work.

Joélia Nogueira understands well the importance of this type of local immersion. She was born and raised in the Rural Area of Caicó, and currently resides in the same neighborhood as the Basic Health Unit where she is allocated during her internship.

“I am a UBS user, but I am also learning there. We know the health network in the region, the municipality, the state, and we can understand how that service works, but also how it can improve, because we are users and we are integrated there. If we manage to place ourselves in society in the context in which we are used to it, we can hear from the population what their needs are in order to try to introduce solutions in our service later on”, expresses Joélia.

For Rafael Medeiros, born in Patos, in the interior of Paraíba, the expansion of quality care beyond the large centers is also something that he not only observes, but experiences, both in his academic career and in his professional training.

“The internalization of science and health, just as it happens here at the ISD, in a region that has its needs for socioeconomic care, happens in our course, which covers the part of the State that is not covered by the metropolitan region. This is important, because normally, what would my perspective be on studying medicine in my city? So it is something that makes it much easier for students, but also for the population, who now have specialized and centralized attention in interiors”, reinforces Rafael.

The students also point out that many health professionals who work in Caicó, EMCM headquarters, are graduates of the UFRN unit who are in medical residency and now work in the community that welcomed them. “This is what we expect for the future”, points out Joélia.