New National Curricular Guidelines of medical courses: opportunities to resignify education

ABSTRACT The new National Curriculum Guidelines aim at restructuring and adapting medical curricula. The objective is to conduct a critical-reflective analysis of the restructure of a medical course’s curricular matrix. This action research was conducted at a Brazilian federal university. The material was analyzed using the discourse analysis method. Among the results, the proposal of a curriculum that values life and transfers the biomedical paradigm to incorporate other dimensions in healthcare is highlighted. The need to strengthen a curricular matrix based on social demands and preferably focused on primary care is indicated. The establishment of longitudinal and transversal relationships among the competency areas of the 2014 National Curricular Guidelines and the curricular components is proposed. The intention is to foster the understanding of determinants and relationships between diseases and the communities’ ways of living.