ABSTRACT
Medical courses in Brazil have implemented subjects and modules that aim to bring students closer to actual national health concerns, as one way of adapting to the growing needs for medical training reorganization. Thus, this article reports on the experience of medical students at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC) [State University of Santa Cruz] with activities and actions included in the Health Care Network and Management module, part of the Teaching-Service-Community Intergration Practice (PIESC), as a proposal for the reorientation of the curriculum and acquisition of leadership skills and management of physical and human resources in health. The proposal was to insert the students at different levels of technological complexity of the Unified Health System (SUS) in order to contextualize the study of the Health Care Network (RAS) through experiences and action research in health services located at different care levels. Semi-structured interviews with professionals and users were therefore performed in each visited environment. These experiences served to broaden the students’ vision of health care networks, enabling a better understanding of how the services are structured, as well as of the magnitude of the obstacles found in different scenarios, providing an in loco experience of the criticisms and difficulties faced by users and professionals. It was noticed that user health problems are often not resolved within the health care services, and the users lack understanding of their health rights. A lack of continuity of the health care was also observed through the various health care levels. Thus, it is concluded that the instances of primary care fail to offer adequate gateway services, culminating in the breakdown of the observed network. The experiment reported in this article demonstrated a dynamic way to approach the issue of Health Care Network Management, contributing to medical student training, as it enabled a better understanding of the network in terms of the health practices and the dimensions of the health-disease process involved in the management of the SUS.
KEYWORDS
Health Service Administration; Primary Health Care; Medical Education