This article discusses the current state of healthcare education practices and the fragmented vision they offer of the human being, in that they reduce man to a technical and passive body, a mere object of invasive and medicinal intervention. By excluding from their horizon any reference to man's holistic dimension, these practices fail to deal with the social, cultural, political and psychological injunctions that are found in the development of states of heath or sickness. Furthermore, they disregard the subjectivity of the players involved in the production of sickness and of cure itself, also disregarding their own role as craftsmen shaping a unique type of modern individualistic subjectivity. Thus, the article presents a critical view of the overly biological attitude of the dominant teachings, a view that has developed even within some of the healthcare schools and that encompasses the learnings provided by the humanities. Finally, the article presents theoretical and methodological guidelines for the development of an alternative model of medical education, one that would be capable of regarding human beings holistically, recognizing the uniqueness of each individual and their condition as subjects of their own history, breaking away from the conservative, authoritarian and market-oriented structures of current medical education.
Medical education; critical pedagogy; body and intercultural dialogue