The need for pedagogical qualifications for teaching cardiology to undergraduate students

To report a training program in cardiology emphasizing changes in its pedagogical practice. These changes were put into practice by some teachers at the Medical School of Porto Alegre of the University of Rio Grande do Sul (FAMED/UFRGS) aiming to make faculty and student activities more dynamic and to promote more efficacious learning. The training program is directed at 5th semester medical students and aims at a behavioral change in teachers and students to promote more interaction, to favor exchanges, and to make the teaching-learning process easier, always maintaining the patient in the center of the medical activity.

The program emphasizes the definition of general and specific objectives for each activity to be developed by the students, with training in the area of admission to the cardiology service, with special emphasis on behavioral change in the cognitive, motor, affective, and attitudinal areas. Knowledge was developed by means of interactive seminars with initial and final assessment tests to identify students' and teachers' performance. The students were evaluated in an immediate, continuous, and progressive way in their daily activities and through comparison of the results of 2 tests, one applied at the beginning of the training and the other at its end. These 2 tests contained the same questions.

We systematically assessed 560 students over 4 years. The mean grades of the tests performed prior to and after the 244 seminars were 7.38+/-1.66 and 9.17+/- 0.82, respectively (p<0.0001). For the tests applied at the beginning and at the end of the training, the mean grades were 5.61+/-1.61 and 9.37+/-0.90, respectively (p<0.0001).

The program proved to be efficient both for the students' learning and for assessing their performance in a systematic and objective way.