Radiologia Brasileira - Publicação Científica Oficial do Colégio Brasileiro de Radiologia

Although Medical Residence Programs are primarily aimed at in-service training, preparing human resources for medical assistance activities, it is also desirable that resident physicians be trained to teaching and research activities.

The development of scientific research, its presentation at seminars and congresses, literature review, learning on how to seek answers for questions, the initiation in the processes of scientific methodology, texts writing, the experience of facing an audience while making presentations in the form of free themes, are all invaluable experiences for the young resident physician. How many professionals have discovered previously hidden or dormant talents for teaching and research by means of such activities? The truth is that every physician should be a permanently studious individual, capable of evaluating his/her own experience as well as others’ experience.

For the teacher or preceptor, particularly those who do not participate in Post-Graduation Programs (either master’s or doctoral degrees), it is the opportunity to provide guidance to students, learn and develop guidance techniques, and to develop in partnership with residents, scientific researches which are also important for the functional assessment of those who work in Universities.

A relevant step towards the integration between residents and teachers is the establishment of the monograph as a mandatory requirement for completion of the Medical Residency Program.

Under the guidance of their teachers, residents prepare monographs with their own casuistry, following the model of a master’s degree dissertation, which may even require oral defense before an examination committee.

Some of these physicians will become candidates to stricto sensu post-graduation courses, with their monographs becoming the basis for the development of their master’s degree dissertations, considerably shortening the duration of such courses (on average, such residents obtain their Master’s degree in one year). The completion of the master fellowship and the publication of papers during residency are signs of their interest on teaching and research, and such an interest will certainly play an extremely relevant role in the pursuit of a faculty career.

Thus, I consider the arguments from those who advocate that Medical Residency is not the proper moment for research as being unfounded and childish; rather, it is the responsibility of the preceptors of medical residency programs, especially those linked to universities, to create the conditions for this to occur, increasing the scope of the education and training of resident physicians.










Associate Professor and Adjunct Coordinator at the Post Graduation Course of Radiology, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. E-mail: edmarchiori@gmail.com