Forming health professionals for community practice

Abstract

In order to achieve a professional training oriented to the Chilean epidemiological needs and to be competents to a health system guided by the family and community health model, since 2012 the University of the Americas has installed the Community Intervention Program (PIC) in the faculty of Health Sciences careers. Through a common curricular line, continually linked to a specific community and actions aimed at strengthening the social network, the PIC wants to form professionals with competencies for the current needs of the Chilean population, as well as contribute to the health indicators of the communities linked with. The evaluation carried out in the fifth year of implementation indicates that, although progress is being made in the right direction, a methodological leap is required to understand the community and to work with it in a more participatory manner, as well as an epistemological advance in the health professionals, that allows them to integrate in a fluid way the community work on health as the axis of their professional actions, in constant tension with the perspective of individual management on the disease.