A barefoot physician? A community physician? Imaginaries about the first physicians of the Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira.

Abstract

The approach to imaginaries represents an additional way of understanding the meaning of the processes that gave rise to institutions and their cultural products. This article presents the main results of the analysis of the social imaginaries present during the process of creation of the School of Medicine of the Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, in relation to the design of the physician's profile. Under the methodological guidelines of the grounded theory, an audiovisual documentary body was analyzed, consisting of fourteen interviews to academic and social managers, professors and first graduates about their participation in the described period and the circumstances surrounding the design of the profile and the arguments of acceptance or rejection. From the initial analysis, the semantic clouds of the profile, acceptance, rejection and practice scenarios were constructed. The emerging categories that defined the profile were "community medicine", "comprehensive training" and "practice scenarios". These imaginaries are related to the training of a comprehensive physician, committed to the community and aware of his role in social transformation. In contrast, other imaginaries related the conception of the initial profile with a low quality physician, destined to the first levels of care and without a solid scientific training.

The study of a social reality is nourished not only by the historical conditions of its production, but also by the analysis and understanding of the imaginaries that also make its origin possible. The study of the profile of the physician at the Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, under this perspective, constitutes an important advance in the construction of meaning.