The educational strategy of FAC is founded on active, community-based education and is aimed at different levels of training, according to the specific needs of each community.
The most general level provides the basic information to the entire population about health care from the mobile health care clinics or through radio programmes.
The second level is intended to train human resources in communities where there is no access to the health system, therefore, the training of community health workers is essential.
At a third level, FAC trains health professionals in their teaching hospital and in the community. In the case of the undergraduate programme we train Technologists in Primary Health Care and in partnership with University of the Andes, we train medical students of III, IV and V semester.
For the last 15 years, FAC has trained Technologists in Primary Health Care to work in rural communities without health professionals, in partnership with Universidad Estatal de Bolívar. A pioneer programme in the country, where students are leaders elected by their communities to voluntarily enroll in a training programme for three years. 50 indigenous students from five provinces have graduated in our Institute, some of which are now part of our professional team and others work for the state (Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Social Development). This initiative of FAC was taken by the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador as a policy that is being implemented all over the country. In addition, we now have an agreement with UNIANDES of Ambato, to train medical students in community health. Our approach is to let students work directly with the population from an early stage, so that they face the challenges of the contact with their future patients. Thus, the graduate doctors will be competent not only in clinical medicine, but also in the essence of their profession which involves skills of communication, health prevention and humanisation of patients. Our theoretical proposal and papers on education can be found here.
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Primer día de clasesFirst day of class
La FAC apuesta por la educación. Creemos que los estudiantes de medicina deben salir de las aulas a la comunidad.
FAC has a firm commitment to education and believes medical students should leave the classroom and get out to the community.
Por esta razón y en convenio con UNIANDES, la FAC está enseñando Medicina Comunitaria a los estudiantes de cuarto, quinto y sexto semestre de la carrera de Ciencias Médicas. Para conocer más sobre la instrucción que la FAC brinda, haz click aquí
For this reason and in partnership with Universidad Regional Autónoma de Los Andes (UNIANDES), FAC trains medical students in Community Medicine. To learn more about the training that FAC provides, click here.