This study describes the experience in training first-year students at the Botucatu School of Medicine/UNESP to conduct home visits as part of the course on University-Health Service-Community Interaction. Faculty members from the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry coordinated the activity, with two groups of 45 students each, by means of the sociodrama technique, which includes warm-up, dramatization, and shared reflections. The main themes brought up by students in the dramatizations were: a) strife and violence; b) poverty and need; c) disappointment and disinterest; d) disempowerment and failure; and e) rejection and distrust. In just a few hours, it was thus possible to experience and elaborate on numerous potentially frightening situations and emotions that are rarely approached during undergraduate medical training. This experience emphasizes the need to prepare undergraduates to make contact with multiple, complex determinants of the health-disease process and act in health care from an interdisciplinary and inter-sector perspective. It is essential for students to have an expanded view of patients within the family and socio-cultural context, drawing on partnership, collaboration, and mutual understanding.
Medical education; House Calls; Mental health; Psychodrama