The Need for Pedagogical Qualifications for Teaching Cardiology to Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Objective -Medical education has become more and more demanding and complex due to the multiplicity of investigative and therapeutical innovations introduced into the services dedicated to teaching. Of these, we can emphasize the incorporation of new technologies to identify and solve problems, and the extension of medical residency programs and postgraduate courses with their research projects. These new fields of activity have broadened the areas of teachers' activities and the horizon of possibilities for students.In regard to undergraduate education, how has it been performed? Will the simple incorporation of the student into the complex system of multiple investigative and therapeutical focuses provide the best conditions for them to acquire knowledge, skills, behavior, and ethical postures?The following Brazilian saying is very popular: "the one who learns, is the one who does, and only the one who knows, does". To assume that a student learned something just because he was present during the time a specific task was performed in a given health service may represent a false assumption of what a student really learned and what he really knows how to do. Learning cannot be seen just as the result of rote memorization.Until the mid 1960s, tests were used to assess students' knowledge (stored information), but other elements cur-rently considered substantial, such as projects, programs, curriculum, teacher's performance, and even the conditions and resources provided by educational institutions, were not valued then 1 . Very slowly, however, other proposals for evaluation have appeared and have been used so far. These proposals have changed the emphasis given to the role played by evaluation in the learning-teaching process. Since then, evaluation began to be seen as a learning opportunity, for both students and teachers. These new assumptions have revealed the need for a program, for sharing the objectives to be reached, and for defining instruments and criteria that allow the recognition and evaluation, with the maximum safety possible, of the progression of the students, both in regard to the intellectual construction of knowledge or the development of skills and the mastering of practical techniques involved in medical practice.Educational programs should consider broader as-