Featuring the Demand Met by Senior Medical Students in Primary Health Care Units in Southern Brazil

Abstract

Featuring the demand in Primary Health Care (PHC) units is essential to properly perform healthrelated diagnosis. In addition, it is an important pedagogical tool used to teach about the real population health needs. This is a cross-sectional study-with random sample-about the care provided by medical students in Southern Brazil, during their Mandatory Internship (MI) period. There was predominance of care given to female patients; 70% were adult or elderly individuals. The Systemic Arterial Hypertension (SAH) was the most diagnosed disease and it was followed by Upper Airway Diseases and by Musculoskeletal Pain. Laboratory tests were requested in less than 20% of the cases and imaging tests were requested in less than 7% of them. The patients were referred to other health care levels in 25% of the cases. The current study helped featuring the epidemiological profile of users in Primary Health Care (PHC) units wherein medical residents of the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM-Universidade Federal de Santa Maria) realized their final course activities. Thus, the results of such featuring may help redirecting the didactic and pedagogical activities, which are required to enable a medical training focused on the population health needs.