Introduction:

The professors in charge of training health professionals need didactic competences for guiding the teaching-learning process. To assess such competences in medical sciences professors is basic, fundamental and decisive for the training of health students.

Objective:

To determine the metacognitive treatment given to the didactic competences of professors in Cuban higher medical education.

Methods:

A review of documents about the didactic competence for professors from the health sector was carried out in the Scopus, SciELO, Redalyc, Latindex, REDIB, Virtual Health Library, Dialnet and Lilacs databases, in Spanish and English, and with no time limit. For the search, the following words were used: Competencia [Competence], Didáctica [didactic], combined with docentes del sector de salud [professors from the health sector]. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 25 scientific articles of sufficient quality and current relevance were selected.

Results:

The didactic competence for professors from the health sector has been studied by different authors. It covers from the professional competence of the health worker to his or her pedagogical and didactic competence. The conceptual evolution is shown and didactic competence is related to continuous professional development.

Conclusions:

The systematization carried out on didactic competence proves the health professionals’ concern for improving the formative process in the universities of medical sciences. Professors should plan, guide, implement and control actions in such a way that their students are active subjects in their own training as health professionals.

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