Resumen

BARREIRO RAMOS, Héctor; BARREIRO PENARANDA, Adriana; BETANCOURT ARIAS, María Josefa  y  PERALTA GODINEZ, Edelmira. Criterios de los médicos de atención primaria sobre la enseñanza de pregrado de la medicina legal. Rev Cubana Med Gen Integr [online]. 2003, vol.19, n.1. ISSN 0864-2125.

Although forensic medicine is basically a practical science, the undergraduate teaching of this science is fundamentally theoretical since it is only based on lecturers and seminars. We believe that this is a contradiction. For this reason, we undertook this preliminary study in the Boyeros polyclinics´health area so as to gain experience that allow us to improve the curriculum at undergraduate level, the basic contents and the teaching variants regarding this subject. The 58 physicians in charge of the primary health care service in this polyclinics were surveyed but only 50 surveys were really useful. The results proved that over 60 % regarded the knowledge acquired as useful; however, over 80 % stated that they had to look for help to draw up the medical-forensic documents and to deal with legal proceedings. Besides, 74 % would have liked to rotate by medical services as in the rest of the subjects and more than 66 % advocate for practical classes. Even if this can not be regarded as a representative sample of all the physicians working at primary health care, at least it is a real sampling of this health care area and underlines the need of delving into and extending this study.

Palabras clave : FORENSIC MEDICINE [education]; EDUCATION, MEDICAL, UNDERGRADUATE [methods]; PRIMARY HEALTH CARE.