Mental health in medical residency admission tests: implications of the 2014 National Curriculum Guidelines

Abstract:

Introduction:

Due to the importance of Mental Health (MH) in medical practice, the National Curriculum Guidelines for the Undergraduate Course in Medicine (DCN) published in 2014 established inclusion of this subject matter. Although medical residency tests must have been affected by this resolution, it remained unclear whether those tests were in line with the new guidelines.

Objective:

this study aims to assess whether the guidelines determined by the Ministry of Health are being followed and, thus, giving due appreciation of the theme of MH.

Method:

Documentary research was conducted on how MH has been approached in the “Direct Access” Medical Residency (RM) admission tests, before and after the publication of the DCN. For this purpose, nine institutions in the south and southeast of Brazil were selected for convenience, delimiting a 10-year period for analysis. The selection, analysis of the evidence and questions were developed by two researchers. In the event of disagreement, decisions were made based on the evaluation of a third investigator (judge). After this process, the questions were categorized into subtopics and the data tabulated on a spreadsheet, analyzed descriptively with percentage distributions for qualitative variables and measures of central tendency.

Result:

The MH content corresponded to 3.8% of the tests. There was no increase in the percentage of issues resulting from the publication of the DCNs. There was a predominance in the areas of Clinical Medicine and Public Health (n=129 / n=109), in contrast to “General Surgery” (n=0). Superiority of the subtopic “Psychopharmacology” was found (n=102).

Conclusion:

As described, there are not yet any implications of the DCN found in the MR admission tests in relation to MH. The way MH is approached in the test paper questions of the analyzed institutions continues to reflect a biological perspective.

Keywords:
Internship and Residency; Mental Health; Community Psychiatry