Introduction:

In a scenario of a great information availability, the production of scientific knowledge in medicine has been increasingly accelerated. The way the medical professional perceives and directs their acquisition of knowledge still lacks national studies, particularly in times of easily accessible internet.

Objective:

To analyze the social representations of physicians working in Primary Health Care (PHC) teams about self-directed learning.

Method:

This is a qualitative-quantitative study based on Moscovici’s Social Representations Theory, with a structural approach to Abric’s Central Core Theory, conducted in three municipalities of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on the subject, which were recorded and transcribed. The freely evoked words that emerged from the inducing term “medical self-learning” were analyzed with the aid of EVOC® software through the four-quadrant chart and CHIC® software analyzed the similarity. Content analysis was performed for the participants’ speeches.

Results:

Fifty interviews were carried out and the freely evoked words that possibly constitute the core of the representations were “knowledge”, “dedication”, “study”, “reading”, “need”, contrasting “research” and “book”.

Conclusion:

The results showed that the learners’ characteristics, practice as a learning locus as opposed to theory, associated with the time barrier, define the core content of the social representation of the participating physicians. In this assessed context, PHC reinforces its importance as a scenario for medical self-learning.

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