O uso de casos clínicos longitudinais no ensino de consultas de pré-natal de risco habitual no curso de medicina em uma instituição da amazônia legal

Abstract

The teaching of obstetrics, specifically focused on routine prenatal care, is extremely important in medical training. However, the teaching process in this area still presents difficulties and challenges, especially regarding the effective integration of theory and practice. Therefore, it is necessary to reflect on the methodologies applied. In this context, modifications in medical education are considered, aiming to add methodologies that provide better integration between theory and practice, in order to meet the real needs of the population. One example of this is the use of active learning methodologies. Among the various methodologies described in the literature, this work adopted Case-Based Learning (CBL) with a longitudinal focus, an active approach that presents students with problem situations that require investigation, analysis, and a search for clarification on their part in a longitudinal manner. Thus, longitudinal clinical cases involving the gestational period were developed, emphasizing situations and occurrences in routine prenatal care, ranging from cases with complications to those without any complications. Furthermore, the use of longitudinal clinical cases in teaching routine prenatal care provides students with the opportunity to manage a complete pregnancy and participate in all consultations during routine prenatal care. In this context, we sought to evaluate whether the use of longitudinal clinical cases is more effective than the traditional methodology in the holistic teaching of routine prenatal care for medical students, as well as to assess the motivation and perception of learning of these students based on the teaching methodology applied. The research was conducted in 2025 with a group of 70 students belonging to the 7th semester of the medical course at a private college, with 35 of them benefiting from the traditional methodology (control group) and 35 benefiting from the active methodology (treatment group). The results showed that the control group did not present a statistically significant difference (p-value = 0.555). In contrast, the treatment group showed a statistically significant increase (p- value < 0.001). Regarding motivation, students in the treatment group felt more motivated to learn more about the topics after the classes ended than students in the control group. Furthermore, regarding perception, the results indicated that student learning was enhanced by the use of longitudinal clinical cases. In this context, the results obtained in this study show that longitudinal clinical cases provide contexts and experiences similar to those that students will encounter during their medical practice, thus contributing significantly to their training. Therefore, the use of longitudinal clinical cases is more effective than the traditional methodology in the holistic teaching of routine risk prenatal consultations for medical students.