[Learning portfolios as a tool for reflection: building competencies for work in the Unified Health System]

To assess the innovative experience of competency education through reflective portfolios for the training of professionals who will work in the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS).

A qualitative research approach was employed. Documentary analysis was carried out covering 25 portfolios produced in the years 2008, 2009, and 2010 in the health policy course at the Federal University of Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in order to verify if this method allowed the acquisition of the competencies: learning to be (acting with autonomy, good judgment, personal responsibility); learning to know (assimilating general and specific scientific and cultural knowledge, which will be complemented and updated in the course of life); learning to do (acquiring procedures that will be useful for facing life and work difficulties); and learning to live and work together (better understanding of others, the world, and their inter-relationships).

Students became involved with the proposed activities, especially the management of information (active search, selection, critical analyses, reviews, syntheses, and evaluation of information). There was a gradual opening to critical thinking, integrating new dimensions to the initial vision held by students on the SUS, which moved from a focus on disease and healing to a focus on health and prevention, and from a vision of SUS as a theoretical model towards a view of SUS as a feasible project that is under construction.

The use of portfolios has enabled the education of citizen-health professionals, with academic, pedagogical, and practical emphasis. This indicates that universities and teachers can turn to the development of decision-making capacities and reflective thinking by students.