Abstract

OTERO IGLESIAS LAZADA, Jacinta; BERNAZA MORALES, Ethel  and  PEREZ DIAZ, Teresa de la Caridad. The final paper of Comprehensive General Medicine (Family Medicine) specialty and the environment/health research. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2008, vol.34, n.3. ISSN 0864-3466.

Introduction The environmental problems can not be considered as the environmentalists´s exclusive problems because in health sciences, those aspects related to environment and health integration are determining. Primary health care is the one in charge of strengthening the biopsychological and environmentalist model. Objectives To describe the characteristics of research on environmental issues in the final papers of the primary health care residency students. Methods The reports from the final papers of Comprehensive General Medicine (Family Medicine) students in "Calixto García" medical school in the years 1990, 1997 and 2006 were reviewed according to the set categories for the analysis of the biopsychological model and the environment. Results Environmental problems were not directly addressed as a research topic. The most discussed issues in this context were lifestyles, air and water pollution and housing. The most common expression where health environment topics underlie was "risk factors". Conclusions Underlying environmental components or processes are found in problems related to the community, the family and the individuals, but they were dealt with in a small number of final papers and sometimes unclearly defined. There were variables from the social environment, mainly lifestyles and psychological problems, from the physical/natural environment such as air and water pollution, and from the constructed environment, for example the housing problems. It is recommended to prepare the healthcare human resources for using a trans-disciplinary approach to the study of environmental problems and to keep on researching the health environment questions in order to strengthen, consolidate and integrate the biopsychosocial and environmentalist model at the primary healthcare level.

Keywords : Biopsychosocial model; environment; research; final paper of residency; primary health care.

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