The Influence of Carl Rogers’ Humanism on the Development of Positive Attitudes in Medical Students

Abstract

The medical school has the purpose of comprehensively training competent undergraduate students by developing their knowledge, skills and attitudes. However, the best way to teach them attitudes has not yet been established, and many schools delegate this mission to humanistic disciplines. There are few reports regarding the influence of humanism on the development of attitudes, fact that increases the difficulty in integrating humanistic themes to teaching purposes in health. The current paper analyzes the influence of Carl Rogers’ humanistic conception on the attitudes of a sample comprising medical school students from the Federal University of Santa Maria, under five dimensions (knowledge, ambience, ethical, social and belief). The results showed that the Rogerian intervention significantly influenced the development of positive attitudes within the “belief” dimension. There was increase in the attitude score in all dimensions, showing positive tendency between the beginning and end of the study. The students whose profile showed positive attitudes in all dimensions were from the female gender, whose fathers and mothers had higher education degree. These students also used books and journals as complementary source of studies and dedicated a time equal to or greater than six hours per week to study. It can be concluded that Carl Rogers’ humanistic principles may be properly used without causing discomfort or threat to both the students and the teacher. The student-centered teaching is not a method or a theory, but a style in the teacher-student relationship, in which the formative aspect outweighs the informative one.