BIOMEDICAL EDUCATION IN A CHANGING SOCIETY

In our times scientific education, especially biomedical education, is facing the challenge of professional training for a changing society, thus it requires a growing social and ethic commitment and an interdisciplinary approach (Griner & Danoff 2000). We need then to think of educational strategies that promote a permanent effort to stimulate scientific vocation, to expand creativity on science and to increase horizontal interaction between the distinct areas of biomedical knowledge. It is also important to emphasize the contribution given by scientists to society, which indicates their role as answers providers of questions linked to life quality. This must be associated with a more humanistic focus on biological and health sciences, and also with the transmission of a correct and up to date knowledge, using several instruments for science popularization and promoting a participant construction of knowledge about health all over the country.

Innovation in this field of training new generations of scientists may be expressed by an approach which assumes health as a dynamic equilibrium process and no longer as a state of well-being or as the absence of disease. Etiologically related to the biological and the social environments combined together, the multi-causal origin of diseases is another new perspective in which the post-graduation courses could develop, as Leselbaum (1998) highlights, a philosophy in common. This philosophy would be centered on health education instead of on a sanitary focus with a hygienistic view. A more democratic orientation, which integrates scientists and community members in a cooperative construction of knowledge has proven to be more fertile as a way to face the health problems of the Brazilian population. Direct transfer of scientific technology, as expert lectures or explanations, are not effective for learning, even at the post-graduation level, and favors a dependent attitude on the part of the communities.

Another educational challenge for biomedical research is the development of very specific studies, yet keeping and preserving macro views upon health problems at the same time. How to make more specific research without losing sight of the whole? Given the hard competition in the biomedical research field, an issue that arises for education from said challenge is the trend in students/professionals to adopt personal purposes as a priority, without having any social commitment. The accessibility of ethical committees for biomedical research is then introduced into this discussion. In spite of the counseling nature of their intervention (Chevenement 1986), those committees are successfully attracting the attention of scientists, physicians and other people who wish to participate on a reflection about the evolution of science. This intensifies the importance of reliability on technological development, the meaning of research and the value of knowledge acquirement.

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