“TO BE A TEACHER”: who am I and why?

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: To be a health professional and, simultaneously, a teacher, encompass distinct knowledge areas and, also distinct professional identities, acting towards formation and shaping the profile of a future health professional. Reconciling these aims becomes then an essential question. OBJECTIVES: To have a better understanding of the day-to-day professional role and to make an analytical link with the international literature in the area.  METHODOLOGY: A four hours’ workshop aimed to professionals involved in the medicine course, despite not all of them being medicine doctors. It was then formally asked the participants about their personal motivation for teaching, and also about experienced difficulties and adopted strategies to overcome them. RESULTS: 21 teachers participated. The detected work motivations were: 1: Personal identification; 2: A sense of renovation. Despite this, difficulties could be identified: 1: How to adequately balance professional and personal life; 2: Difficulties related to generational characteristics and 3: Personal monetary rewarding. In what refers to adopted strategies, it was possible to identify: 1: A better use of available work time; 2: Personal revival; 3: Sense of humour; 4: Learning processes of new technologies and 4: Sharing process in trying for problems solution. DISCUSSION: It was established a space for reflection and thinking on the meaning of being a health professional and academic. It were considered, among other questions, the relationship between teaching activities and the continuous transformation inherent to the teaching process. As a result, this lead to a different way of looking and attitudes in what refers to the health professional and also teaching. CONCLUSIONS: The present experience has shown how fundamental is to create opportunities for reflection about the teaching role and its identity constructed on the day-to-day work and also the institutional commitment in promoting such attitudes.