Mandatory curricular internship at Brazilian Unified Health System

knowing where to go to not be taken anywhere

Abstract

The mandatory curricular internship is set up simultaneously as pedagogical device and permanent challenge for dental programs, considering its strategic role in the articulation of the training process with the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS). This article is an integrative review on the subject, made from 29 articles whose objective was to create an enlarged interpretation of these studies. The most mentioned positive aspects were related to the characteristics of the work process experienced in the health units, emphasizing the use of soft technologies, traditionally absent in the clinicalsurgical environment in the traditional disciplines. As for the negative aspects, beyond institutional limitations, there emerged the difficulty of teachers/preceptors in following the interns and the distancing of the dentists from interactions in multi-professional teams. It can be inferred from the
analysis that there is not yet a consensus on the structuring role of the internships in the Pedagogical
Projects. They are understood, essentially, as activities developed to enhance training quality, with
focus exclusively on the students. Dental programs that seek to be innovative and protagonists of
changes must give to the internship a differentiated role, valuing its potential of aggregating elements
which together stand for the core of dental training articulated with SUS. It is fundamental the permanent involvement and participation of teachers, students and, especially, health care professionals and community associated to the Health Units (USF), the internship’s privileged setting, in which this pedagogical device could be developed in a compatible way with the struggle for
universal oral health, one of quality, equal and public