[Venezuela: alternative focusing of teaching and service in the national health system]. / Venezuela: enfoque alternativo de docencia-servicio en el sistema nacional de salud.

The author relates an experiment conducted at the University of Zulia in Venezuela, to restructure the curriculum. The process is centered on the training and performance of dentists, within the National Health System and a local health system in Maracaibo. The reasons that prompted the restructuring are reviewed, and an alternative approach to current teaching methods is proposed, in which programs are defined on the basis of the most important epidemiological developments in the country. The operational model is based on the strategy of teaching-service integration in the National Health System.

[Community laboratories as tools of scientific research on health society in Venezuela]. / Laboratorios de comunidad como instrumentos para la investigación científica de salud y sociedad en Venezuela.

The School of Dentistry of Zulia University, Maracaibo, Venezuela, set up "community laboratories" to investigate alternative solutions to Venezuelan oral health problems. These academic-administrative units were used to make trial of different arrangements for the provision of dental care in different community situations. The purposes of the community laboratories were to design, develop, and compare comprehensive dental care systems, delegate functions to auxiliary personnel selected in the communities themselves, use simplified equipment, design techniques for reducing costs while maintaining quality, generate a methodology for community motivation, apply preventive techniques on a mass scale, offer the experience so acquired to the public services and to the profession at large, and supply information on the community essential for the design of curricula. The result has been highly encouraging because of the degree of community participation obtained and the salutary effect on student training and attitudes.