CANDEAL PROJECT HOLDS A GREAT MEETING WITH STUDENTS FROM ALL COURSES AT BAHIANA

Promote educational practices in communities with multidisciplinary teams, focusing on prevention and health promotion. This is the main objective of the Candeal Project, Education and Health activity promoted by Bahiana in partnership with the Sanitary District of Brotas. On the night of March 02nd, the Project's coordination, led by Professor Maria Antonieta Nascimento Araújo, from the Psychology course, held a seminar on integration and presentation of the project. Students, teachers, community agents and partners were present, bringing together more than 120 people. 

O Candeal Project operates through 12 groups made up of students from courses at Bahiana and supervising teachers. In cases of units linked to the PSF, the teams are community agents and health professionals. In the first moment of the meeting, the groups met with their supervisory professors to establish dynamics and work methodologies.

 The groups serve different segments (obese, hypertensive, diabetic, teenagers, women, elderly, pregnant women, sedentary people, smokers and workers) registered in a Family Health Unit in Candeal (USF/Candeal), in the city of Salvador.

The practice has as its goals the interdisciplinarity and the constructivist model of teaching/learning, encouraging students from different areas of training to carry out integrated work plans and jointly coordinate health education group sessions with that population. Each team has a supervising professor, a USF/Candeal professional and 14 students.

GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS

Among other purposes, the Candeal Project aims to encourage multidisciplinary work, encouraging the coexistence of students of Medicine, Occupational Therapy, Psychology, Nursing, Dentistry, Physiotherapy and Biomedicine. This team work intends to make clear the importance of each professional within the team.

Another relevant point is the interaction with the community, as noted by the 4th semester student of Medicine, Felipe Neves Azevedo, who for the first time participates in an action with communities. “The work is important, as it involves interaction with the community. We will have training beforehand. We're not just going to pass on content, but we're also going to learn with the community”, he says.

 Working outside the classroom is a great incentive for medical student Bianca Muraro. She says that she has already participated in activities of the Collective Health discipline, working at Abrigo do Salvador with the elderly and in a day care center. “We start to feel more medical, more useful, leaving the classroom”.

Contact with patients is what leads Nursing student Lara Peçanha Pavan to participate once again in the Candeal Project. She says that her experience came from taking the Collective Health course, when she developed activities at the Abrigo do Salvador. Lara points out the initiative is very important for the training of health professionals, “especially in Nursing, because you have a lot of contact with people, patients, so it's good to be practicing. And I hope to be surprised how it happened with the elderly group I worked with”.

And expectations are also mirrored in the supervising professors. “I find participating in this project very pleasurable. It's a job where we see students waking up to a way of receiving knowledge. And with the community it is interesting because we leave the field of science and we are going to learn from popular knowledge”. The statement is from the professor of Hematology of the Biomedicine course, Maria Teresita Bendicho. She says that it is the first time that she is a supervisor teacher, but that she was already participating in the project as a support teacher.

The activities of the meeting ended with the presentation of the student of Medicine, Isabela Pilar. She participated in the Project two years ago, which influenced her to carry out a monograph on the topic: Popular Education in Health.

According to Isabela, “every health professional must be aware that he is an educator. Because, in this way, it will promote health. And in addition to being an educator, he is also a social agent organizing and transforming the communities where he works”.

According to the coordinator, professor Maria Antonieta Araújo, the results are very positive, indicating an increase in self-care, self-esteem and the acquisition of healthy habits by the participating population. The activity also enriches the practice of students from different areas, especially those of medicine who report learning a new way of seeing the disease, and adding value to the work of the Family Health Unit/Candeal with the academic partnership.

For her, the meeting was “a moment of joy, because, from now on, everyone will make their own way within the work. From here, ideas for research can arise, for new work. It is an extension activity and we will always be evaluating and improving”.