Purpose Physicians worldwide need to be able to identify and assess suicide risk or behavior in their consults. The proper training of medical staff is an important form of suicide prevention, especially because 80% of the patients who died by suicide were in contact with a health-care service in the year of their death. The purpose of this study is to verify if some of the most important Brazilian medical schools includes discussions regarding suicide in their curricula, and describe them. Design/methodology/approach The study performed a documentary analysis of all Brazilian federal higher education institutions. The analysis involved selecting the institutions that approached the topic of suicide in their curricula, and sorting it by keywords. The curricula that contained such keywords were then entirely read, analyzed and all components found were described regarding course period, workload and approach. Findings Within the 68 analyzed institutions, 19 (28%) included suicide in their curricula with a total of 31 components approaching suicide among them. Those components belonged to different stages of the course and had different workloads and approaches. A total of seven different approaches were identified: Clinical (54.8%); Emergency (16.1%); Medical Psychology (9.7%); Ethics (6.5%); Social (6.5%); Occupational (3.2%) and Forensic (3.2%). Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first to address medical education regarding suicide in a large number of Brazilian institutions. It is also one of the few studies worldwide to quantify suicide discussion on a large number of institutions using documentary analysis.

Resumo: Introdução: A escolha da carreira médica representa uma importante decisão do profissional, cuja motivação pode ser determinada por fatores internos ou externos ao indivíduo. Objetivo: Este estudo teve como objetivo compreender os fatores que contribuíram para a esco-lha da pediatria entre os pediatras de um hospital universitário. Método: Trata-se de estudo descritivo, exploratório e qualitativo, realizado em um hospital universitário com 14 pediatras. A coleta de dados foi realizada entre fevereiro e abril de 2021 por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas. Analisaram-se os dados com base na análise de conteúdo. Resultado: A identificação com crianças, a satisfação profissional, o perfil clínico e a maternidade foram fatores internos que motivaram a escolha dos pediatras. Dos fatores externos, o ambiente, os aspectos da criança, a família e os profissionais foram fundamentais para decisão. Conclusão: A afinidade com as crianças, a exposição ao campo de prática, a relação com os pro-fessores e a identidade com o trabalho clínico contribuíram para a escolha da pediatria.