Reflections about the biopsychosocial curriculum

Abstract

During the last years, in some universities, new curricular forms in medical studies were implanted using the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) methodology. At Londrina State University, the PBL curriculum was implanted in 1998 and bears the expression "Biopsychosocial" as a guideline. However, from the beginning, such expression was used as a sum of the Biological, the Psychological, and the Social dimensions of the human being. And the curriculum has always had the intention to be multi/interdisciplinary. The present work is the result of a research based on several authors aiming at understanding what Biopsychosocial would mean. The conclusion draw is that it is an epistemological position different from the traditional ones, with a different character of what it is to teach and learn medicine as well as other dimensions of the medical work.