In the last few years, medical education has been going through curricular and pedagogical changes with the purpose of educating a new health professional. One of the pedagogical alternatives is the education based on problem-solving, which works essentially with the construction of knowledge using significant experiences. Such learning model has enabled curricular changes, which, in the field of psychiatry, reflect the conquest of significant space for the development of a more humane and integral medical practice This article aims to discuss the experience of the Medical School of Universidade São Francisco (USF), in Bragança Paulista, concerning the implementation of the psychiatry internship using the problem-based learning (PBL) methodology since 2003. The psychiatry internship is undertaken in the fifth year of Medical School, and it consists of 320 hours, which correspond to 40 hours a week for 8 weeks. Activities are developed at the day hospital, at the outpatient clinic and at the general hospital during delivery of consultation-liaison psychiatry service. There was significant increase in the knowledge acquired by the students who, upon completing the internship, were able to develop clinical reasoning skills and had consolidated concepts and psychiatric practices adequate to the general medical education and compatible with the purposes of the undergraduate program. The reported experience can serve as a model for the implementation of a learning methodology regarding mental health based on the principles of the psychiatric reformation in Brazil, trying to develop community and interdisciplinary practices.
Medical education; method; internship; teaching; psychiatry
