Sírio-Libanês opens faculty of health sciences – 11/28/2023 – Balance and Health

Hospital Sírio-Libanês inaugurates its faculty of health sciences this Tuesday (28) with an innovative curriculum model that prioritizes a set of knowledge rather than isolated disciplines, laboratories with cutting-edge technology and practical classes in communities with different social contexts.

With investments of R$60 million, the college will offer courses in the areas of nursing (monthly fees of R$2,460), physiotherapy (R$2,270) and psychology (R$3,995), each with 50 initial places. Classes begin at the end of February 2024.

The institution plans to offer a medical course in the future, but there is no set deadline. A decree from the Ministry of Education restricted the creation of medical courses in the country and led to the cancellation of more than 60 course evaluations in the area that were in progress.

One fifth of the places on Sírio’s three undergraduate courses are allocated to young people in situations of socioeconomic vulnerability. The selection criteria include family income of up to two minimum wages and always having studied in a public school or with a full scholarship at a private school.

Half (10%) of the social scholarships are financed by the college and the other half through a scholarship fund with fundraising from donors.

“Sometimes, just a scholarship doesn’t solve the problem. He needs to be supported with food, transportation”, says Denise Jafet, president of the Sociedade Beneficente de Senhoras Hospital Sírio-Libanês, another scholarship fund will be created with the aim of helping these students to continue studying.

Installed in an 11-story building in Bela Vista, in the Avenida Paulista region, in São Paulo, the college has 14 classrooms, nine laboratories, 11 rooms for group activities and a library that houses an entirely digital collection with more than 10.5 thousand titles. There is an area where students can study the human body through virtual reality.

According to Paulo Nigro, CEO of Hospital Sírio-Libanês, the entire structure was planned to offer a series of undergraduate courses in the health area in the medium and long term. In five years, it is expected that 5,000 students will be visiting the site.

“We have an expansion project. Teaching is one of our business verticals that, now, graduation comes to reinforce.” Sírio has been offering postgraduate, medical residency, master’s and doctorate courses for more than two decades in its teaching and research center.

Fernando Ganem, general director of Hospital Sírio-Libanês, says that one of the goals of undergraduate courses is to train professionals who are better prepared for the job market. “We are not creating a college to train professionals for Syria, but to improve the country’s health. Professionals who are technically competent but socially committed to a full and fair life.”

Students will have practical classes both at Sírio and in other public services that are managed by the institution, such as the Hospital Geral do Grajaú (south zone) and the Hospital Municipal Infantil Menino Jesus, in the central region of the capital.

“Taking students to communities so that, with their practices, they can change health indicators, is part of the entire pedagogical project”, says Ganem.

According to Luiz Reis, research director at Sírio, the college’s model deviates from the traditional teaching pattern in which the teacher is the holder of knowledge and the student is a mere listener. “The teacher’s role today is much more about helping the student learn than teaching. The student spends less time in the classroom and more time practicing to improve their knowledge.”

The curriculum, explains Reis, is integrated and guided by skills, not subjects. For example: instead of studying the musculoskeletal system, the student will learn about movement.

“For the movement to happen, I need the combination of three functions: for the bone, the ligaments and the muscle to work. The student studies this in an integrated way. Both in normal situations and in critical situations, such as a spinal cord trauma”, he says .

From the first year onwards, students will take classes in simulation centers. There is a hyperrealistic clinical center that simulates, for example, a real infirmary. It is there that students will learn a series of procedures, from measuring blood pressure to intubation or lumbar puncture.

These spaces feature robot dolls that simulate vital signs, such as breathing and heartbeat. The proposal is that the student is trained to make quick decisions in emergency situations. “I can program the doll so that, during practice, it goes into cardiac arrest,” says Reis.

Simulation centers are adaptable to the needs of each course. For example, in a class on difficult communication, a psychology student may be exposed to a situation in which a mother faints upon learning that her son has advanced cancer. In this case, mother and son played by actors.

“It’s different from the student sitting down and the teacher saying: ‘in a difficult situation, it’s important that you do this or that’. You bring the concept into practice”, says Reis.

Students will also have the opportunity to personalize their academic journey with current themes. Among them, knowledge about robotic surgery, mindfulness and palliative care, which become part of the undergraduate curriculum.

Topics that are in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as reproductive rights, social and environmental determinants of health and disease, violence and its effects, among others, are also on the program.

The college also has a careers hub through which students will receive information about professional opportunities, international courses and new business ideas.

For Paulo Nigro, the college’s biggest difference is the possibility of interacting between quality teaching, which uses modern and updated concepts, with the entire arsenal of excellence and philanthropy that the Sírio-Libanês institution brings.

“Our biggest challenge is to train citizens, as well as a good professional. Our second challenge was to set up a pedagogical project that stimulates citizen development”, says Fernando Ganem.