Clinical Trials in the Cuban Medicine's Study Program

Abstract

Introduction: The quality provided to clinical trials, is an issue of huge importance in doctors' education.
Objective: To verify the presence of the subject "clinical trials" (CT) in the Cuban Medicine Study Program.
Materials and Methods: A curriculum evaluation research, exploratory study using the technique of document's content analysis, surveys, description and triangulation of information was performed. Objectives, skills, content and structure were analyzed; macro and micro curriculum were confronted and five experts were interviewed.
Results: Presence of the CT was found implicitly in three functions and fifty-four subjects; explicitly only in a discipline and subject. Difficulties in skills operationalization and in content structuring and goals were evident.
Conclusions: Clinical Trials are present in the professional profile and the final goals of the Cuban general physician in an implicit, diverse and relevant way. It is rethinking in a system; the structure's content research within the career and not the clinical trials as something independent, and also the interdisciplinary role and teaching's problematic. The predominance of education on the Job as a form of organization of medicine teaching in the career is an opportunity for students to contact with clinical trials.

Keywords: clinical trials, curriculum, medical career, skills, study program, goals.