Introduction:

Brazilian medical training has been rethought from the National Curriculum Guidelines, which show the need to include approaches in the curricula that consider the training of general practitioners, aimed at assisting vulnerable populations.

Objective:

The objective was to describe the profile of medical students at universities in Santa Catarina and to analyse which skills they describe as necessary to medical care for the indigenous population.

Method:

This was a cross-sectional quantitative and exploratory qualitative study. Data was collected using an online questionnaire with medical students from the state of Santa Catarina. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis was used for qualitative data.

Results:

The profile reflected a predominance of women (66.95%), a mean age of 24.47 years (± 5.35), and 83.26% self-declared as being of white race/colour. In addition, 76.99% of the students were born in the southern region of Brazil; 41.43% are taking the basic cycle of the course; 45.61% did not enroll due to ethnic quota; in relation to income, 52.3% of the students have a household income of up to five minimum wages. The categories that emerged from the analysis were communication skills (the ability to build a good doctor-patient relationship and to communicate), empathy (willingness to look at the individual through their experiences and use this to aid treatment), cultural aspects (anthropological and cultural knowledge of the community to which assistance is provided), social determinants (understanding of the specific vulnerabilities of this population).

Final considerations:

This article as allowed us to reflect on the study of plurality about health and disease processes relating to indigenous health and has analysed who the students are and how indigenous health and medical competencies to assist this population are being addressed during training in the state of Santa Catarina.

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