Fitoterapia como conteúdo nas graduações particulares de medicina no Brasil

Abstract

The use of herbs medicines is a millenary therapeutic practice, which started being documented in Brazil with the arrival of the great Portuguese navigations. Currently, linked to the use of medicinal plants is phytotherapy, a term used for therapy, using medicines with constituents from plants or plant derivatives in different pharmaceutical forms. The implantation of phytotherapy on the National Health Service (SUS) began in the year of 1982, through specific programs in development to this day. An obstacle to the advance of the programs is the lack of knowledge or little phytotherapeutic mastery from health professionals. This implies bad orientation and inadequate prescription, unraveling undesired effects, drug interaction and misuse of national programs. Thereby, it becomes important to encourage the university and professional qualification in the approach of these themes. The objective of the current study was to analyze the teaching of phytotherapy within the medical course of private higher education institutions under the perspective of students and medical professionals. The methodology is a quali-quantitative descriptive exploratory study. In this the verification of the private medical schools active in Brazil was made with the help of the e-MEC website, by the Ministry of Education. Subsequently, the website of each institution that presents the active medical course was verified, in search of the phytotherapy subject. The work was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (CEP) from Juiz de Fora Federal University (UFJF) for the application of surveys to medical students and professionals. From the results it was possible to observe that few private colleges offer classes that address phytotherapy and medicinal plants. However, there is the interest of students and doctors regarding the topic, given that big part of them considers phytotherapy and herbs medicines as important to the medical practice.