Caracterización de desarrollo cognitivo en estudiantes de medicina venezolanos en la Misión Barrio Adentro

introduction: the implementation of a novel medical formative program is a challenge for any educational system and should be met because the universities must be on a par with the present demands of the society. there is some social debt in the field of healthcare in venezuela; therefore, a quality massive medical formation is required. in this regard, we developed a formation program in 2004 that is undergoing constant improvement and thus requires evaluation of and feedback on its results. objective: to characterize the cognitive development of the integrated community medicine students. methods: data collection was based on a student-tailored questionnaire and a key informant interview, being both instruments prepared by the author; manual data processing and results shown in text, tables and graphs. results: it was found that 75 % of the students looked for information for their homework whereas only 53.3 % succeeded. the most used method of comparison of ideas was the exchange of views with the professors (75 %). thirteen percent of the students did not match the obtained information with other people. conclusions: most of the students did not achieve the cognitive development in terms of knowledge and skills that the basic sciences′ problem-based method demands.