Introduction:

The Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) Medical School was created with the aim of training general practitioners, who would meet the demand for knowledge of the care model proposed by the Unified Health System (SUS). Thus, a competency-based curriculum was chosen, with longitudinal insertion of first to sixth year students into Primary Health Care (PHC) settings, and the adoption of active learning methodology.

Objective:

To evaluate the extent to which the Medical School at UFSCar, considering its didactic and organizational aspects, resulted in the training of professionals focused on practice in PHC.

Methods:

Physicians who graduated from Classes I to V at UFSCar were invited to participate in the study. Upon acceptance, a virtual questionnaire was sent, including identification, analysis of the professional profile, analysis of factors that influenced their choice of specialty and factors that may or may not have contributed to their focus on PHC. The results were subjected to descriptive analysis and presented as mean ± SD or absolute frequency (percentage), according to the variable.

Results:

From the 183 students contacted, 77 responded to the survey. Of these, 73 (94.8%) chose to specialize, one of whom chose to work in PHC as a Family and Community doctor. The element that had the most influence, both positive and negative, on the choice of specialty, was contact with a medical field during undergraduate training. Regarding the elements that may have sparked the students’ interest in working in PHC, 13 of the 16 elements evaluated (81.2%) did not contribute in such a manner.

Conclusions:

As with other medical courses in Brazil, graduates from the UFSCar medical school opted to undertake specializations that were not aimed at working in PHC, in contradiction with the restructured care model proposed by SUS.

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