Introduction:

Medical education in Brazil is facing an important expansion process. This reality has been strongly influenced by educational programs and policies implemented mainly in the last few decades.

Objective:

The study aimed to provide an overview of the formation and evaluation of undergraduate medical courses in the national context.

Method:

A documentary and descriptive study was conducted, with a quantitative approach. Data was collected from the National Higher Education Assessment System of the Ministry of Education, made available by the Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies and Research, the body that coordinates and manages data related to the regulation, evaluation and supervision processes of higher education in the federal education system. Twenty years of medical courses offered in Brazil (2000-2019) were analyzed.

Results:

In the period under study, the number of Medical Schools grew by 214.9%. In total, 337 active undergraduate medicine courses linked to public (35%) and private (65%) higher education institutions were analyzed, totaling 34,585 annual vacancies offered. The courses are distributed in the 27 Brazilian federative units, with a higher and lower concentration of places and Medical Schools in the Southeast and North regions, respectively. The national average number of vacancies/year was 1280.9 vacancies/year and the vacancy/inhabitants ratio was 16.5 vacancies/100 thousand inhabitants. Most of the courses obtained a grade three in the quality indicators proposed by the Ministry of Education.

Conclusion:

It was concluded that: i) the teaching of Medicine in Brazil has been going through an important expansion process, ii) that it is fundamentally private, iii) poorly distributed throughout the country, and iv) it presents minimum quality indicators for maintaining its operation.

        · resumo em Português     · texto em Português     · Português ( pdf )