In-home Consultations to Chronic Disease Children: the Impact in Educational Formation of Medicine Students

Abstract

Objective: to describe the educative impact of in-home consultations to children with chronic diseases in a group of students coming from different Schools of Medicine in Brazil. Methods: qualitative research. A group of seven students of medicine, accompanied by their professors, coming from different Schools of Medicine in Brazil, made home consultations to children with chronic diseases, such as: cerebral palsy, congenital malformations, severe convulsion syndromes, severe asthma, neurodegenerative diseases and tumor after-effects. All the reports made by the students were analyzed by a participating observer. The reports were separated in four categories: human suffering, home visitation effectiveness, care coordination of the family physician and the physician as a placebo. Results: the students expressed that it is necessary to carefully listen the patient and the family to make them feel they are not alone, help them with the organization of their lives and to fi nd a sense of the disease the family has. Conclusions: home visitations are an important educational resource for the Primary Care teaching during a pre-grade. Also, it is important to make the students feel the need to combine technical competence with communication skills in order to offer a longitudinal, human, integral and continuous health care.