[Evaluating the professors visits on the care of patients with knee osteoarthrosis]. / Evaluación de la visita de profesores en la atención de la osteoartrosis de rodilla.

BACKGROUND: visits of professors is an educational strategy (ES) that allow the exchange of clinical experience between specialists and physicians of first contact and let to both reconsider their daily work, incorporate useful tools to promote learning, and implement strategies to solve problems in clinical work. The aim was to describe an ES carried out in a program of knee osteoarthritis, differentiating clinical competence from professional performance. METHODS: ten family physicians and an orthopaedic specialist participated. The ES took place by assessing competence in clinical cases; clinical performance with an observation guide as well as reviewing grounds for transfers to a second level. RESULTS: competence skills had found an initial media of 25 and at the end of 38 (p=0.025). On the observation guide a middle initial of 29 and final 91; finally, in submission evaluation a 50 % was adequate at the beginning of the ES with a 100 % at the end. CONCLUSIONS: development in doctors' clinical competence skill was observed and a better performance in medical care.

[Physician's humanistic qualities expected by society]. / Características humanistas del médico deseadas por la sociedad.

Forming physicians educative institutions must pay attention to society expectations about health professionals. Physicians and patients as users of health services were interviewed in order to know what the physician's profile is to be qualified as satisfactory. Results were analyzed with a qualitative method. Thirty seven health professionals were interviewed. Group included: physicians, nurses, social medical workers, medical office assistants and medicine students. We interviewed three patient groups (hypertensive and diabetic patients) and 30 additional patients with age range from 18 to 50, most of them female. Characteristics that were more frequently mentioned by patients: skills in communication in order to give them better information about its disease, kindly and humane care (compassion and emphatic). These aspects are related more with attitude than to knowledge. Therefore, we can conclude that forming physician institutions should not worry only their graduate's cognitive skills, but also to define their humane qualities. This would make possible to establish suitable pedagogic strategies in order to achieve and assess humane formation to fit with society expectations.