The Medical Student's View on Mediarte's Influence on Medical Education
ABSTRACT Play is an extremely important tool for all children and, at the hospital, it represents an escape for young patients from a taxing environment and from the symptoms of their diseases. In this context, “Mediarte: with Love and Humor” is an outreach project which aims to practice play therapy, music therapy and clown therapy in the pediatric ward of a university hospital. In addition to transforming the children's lives (routine), it also has the potential to positively influence the project's volunteers – medical students at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of this project on the medical training and personal development of the volunteers, based on the Brazilian National Guidelines of Medical Training (DCN). Thus, a qualitative study was conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews and the content was analyzed in line with Bardin's proposals. Three themes were analyzed: “Why am I here?” “What have I learned?” and “What barriers have I found?” The results showed that the volunteers are keen to have an early opportunity to be placed in the health care environment and interact with kids, as important aspects that attracted them to the project, as well as the chance to develop abilities such as communication, humanized care and doctor-patient relationship skills. As a challenge, for example, the students described the need to adapt their behavior while playing with ill children, who, despite their own limitations, never lose the sparkle in their eyes during the proposed activities. The study concluded that the project helped the volunteers develop some of the key competencies and skills required by the new DCN. These results can be used to encourage the practice of “Mediarte” as an additional educational strategy to meet the current demands of complex, extended medical training. It also serves as a successful example that may stimulate the implementation of similar projects at other medical schools throughout Brazil.
