Experiências de estudantes cotistas no curso de medicina da UFRN: uma compreensão fenomenológica

Abstract

Until the enactment of the 2012 Quota Law, the country's medical courses were occupied almost entirely by socially more affluent individuals, and since then, this student body has begun to change. From 2012 on, a new moment was inaugurated in the university and in Brazilian medicine, which began to be occupied by other bodies, other histories and ways of existing. The heterogenization of the university profile demands a more attentive and careful look at the new ways of occupying the university and medical education. In order to get closer to this reality, we started from the following research question in this work: What are the meanings of being a quota student in the medical course at UFRN? The aim of this study was to understand the experiences of being a quota student in the medical school at UFRN in the light of Heidegger's hermeneutics. This is a phenomenological-hermeneutic research and used the narrative interview as an instrument. Three medical students from the Natal campus who entered through affirmative action vacancies were interviewed. The path used in the interpretation of the narratives is based on the hermeneutic circle and speaks of an approximation of our comprehensive way of existing as a possibility for doing research in psychology. The narratives produced in this study show the challenges faced by quota students to stay in the course and feel they belong. Structural conditions of the organization of the course, such as the distances between fields of practice, the high workload of the course, the high costs involved in university permanence and the fragility of student assistance policies were pointed out as aspects that contribute to the uprooting of students in the course. It is also observed that belonging to this course is crossed by the sedimented meanings of being a physician as a white, middle/upper class individual, coming from private education. Black, low-income and disabled quota students report feeling that the course was not designed for existences like theirs. The results suggest that there is still a need for more comprehensive studies to investigate the experiences of quota students in public universities and the conditions of permanence offered to these students.