Health management teaching of dentistry courses in Parana

Abstract

The study aimed to analyze the teaching of management in dentistry at the universities of the state of Paraná. This was a descriptive, cross-sectional research, based on secondary data, conducted in 2019. Information was collected from public and private higher education institutions that offered a dentistry course, based on the list of approved, initiated and postgraduate courses; assets of the national register of higher education courses (e-MEC register). Data were synthesized in a standardized form using Microsoft Excel and after typing, this allowed descriptive analysis by EpiInfo (Version 7.2) and presentation in absolute and relative frequencies. Bivariate analyses were performed by the program Biostat using the G and Fischer's exact tests, at a significance level of 5%. In Paraná, 29 Dentistry courses were offered, of which 5 were approved, but had not yet started their activities. Of the researched courses, 21 were of a private (private) administrative nature, seven were public and only one public course that charged the undergraduate students a monthly fee. Most courses (58.6%) had a specific management discipline, as a compulsory curriculum component (96.6%), offered predominantly in the last year of graduation (55.2%), with hour loads ranging from 21- to 60 hours (61.9%). Most (51.7%) of undergraduate dentistry courses devote only up to 1% of their workload to health management. The results showed that management education in this state has been little explored, making it necessary to include a higher workload focused on the theme in the curriculum matrices, aiming to improve the training of future dentists.