Evaluation of leprosy instruction by students of a brazilian public medical school

• Autor(a) principal: Cynthia Rosseti Portela Alves
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Marcelo Grossi Araújo, Maria Monica Freitas Ribeiro, Elza Machado de Melo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-52712015v40n3e00522015; http://hdl.handle.net/1843/56700; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1483-3818; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4877-7188
• topic: Teaching on leprosy; Medical students; Medical education; Hanseníase; Estudantes de medicina; Educação médica

Objectives: To evaluate teaching on leprosy at a public medical school located in a metropolis in southeastern Brazil with a low leprosy prevalence rate. Results: An analysis performed by means of a comparative cross-sectional study on two parallel groups of students (freshmen and interns) demonstrated that most students began the medical course with some knowledge of the signs and symptoms of the disease. The interns were shown to have more theoretical knowledge and more favorable attitudes toward the disease compared to the freshmen. Most of the interns stated that the topic had been addressed during the course but that practical teaching was insufficient. Students who had had the opportunity for practical experience with patients were more confident in their ability to attend to similar cases. Conclusion: Although from a statistical point of view the results may seem very favorable, the same cannot be said when assessing the situation from the perspective of education and public health, since a large number of final-year medical students have not been provided with basic information on the disease.