Introduction:

The Brazilian Education Guidelines for medical courses brought new designs for the education and development of abilities and competencies that qualify physicians for their practice.

Objective:

To identify the perception of graduates on the acquisition of abilities and competencies considered in the pedagogical project of a medical course.

Methods:

A cross-sectional study was developed with 229 graduates from a medical program carried out between 2005 and 2012, at Universidade Anhanguera-Uniderp in Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. The study involved the application of a self-administered questionnaire including 34 competencies and abilities, assessed through a Likert scale, from April to July 2013.

Results:

Regarding the acquisition of general competences, “good” or “very good” answers were found for most of the studied items. For the competency regarding communication, most of the “very good” answers were found in the domains “being capable of interacting with other health professionals” (60%) and “being capable of maintaining information confidentiality” (68%). As for specific competencies, the majority of the graduates referred to the acquisition of most domains as “good” or “very good”. The domains “using scientifically validated therapeutic and diagnostic procedures” and “mastering knowledge in physiopathology, treatment and rehabilitation of prevalent diseases” had the highest indices of “good” answers, 62% and 59%, respectively. As regards the acquisition of complementary competencies, the domains concerning general and specific practices, such as “establishing a physician-patient relationship”, “performing a physical exam correlating it to anatomical references” and “performing a general and segmentary physical exam” achieved a greater percentage of positive answers (good or very good). The domains regarding “performing a special neurological exam”, “performing a special orthopedic exam” and “immobilizing fractures” presented negative and regular answers, which when combined corresponded to 49%, 69% and 83%, respectively.

Conclusions:

The present study served as a basis for changes in the course, providing resources for improving the quality of education and meeting the graduates’ needs.

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