Natália Madureira Ferreira
Western University (Ontario)
After the completion of my residency program, I started my masters in Collective Health at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), with emphasis on politics, planning and management. In my masters, I studied the intersections between health policies and medical education, focusing on management of family medicine residency programs. The research aimed understanding the alignment between resident needs, educational purpose, health policies and community necessity as important elements for a residency program socially referenced. Since 2015 I have a position at the Federal University of Uberlandia (UFU) as an assistant professor and have been conducting my activities in the Collective Health Department. I am most interested in expanding the perception of research in Family Medicine and develop a graduate program in the field at UFU so it´s specificity can be fully explored and appreciated. I have taught undergraduate students, interns, and residents since then. In 2018, I was accepted for a PhD in Collective Health at Unicamp, with emphasis in Social Sciences Applied to Health. The research project addressed the assistance to sexually assaulted women in the context of medical education and gave a unique opportunity to be a Visiting International Student at the University of British Columbia´s Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Unfortunately, COVID-19 happened, and I was forced to interrupt research to be in frontline strategy. I am also currently working for a Health-Tech company that is using telemedicine as a strategy to expand access to health care professionals throughout Brazil. The use of telemedicine brings different challenges: keeping a proper patient-centered care with the limitations of online consultations, the integration of data and inputs of a multi-professional time responsible for the care of patients that are geographically apart and the analysis of data that can contribute to the development of a more efficient and tailored care. I believe that telemedicine is an interesting new field that is just starting its development in Brazil, and it is mandatory that not only ethical procedures be in place but also that it´s accompanied by quality knowledge production for its potential to be fully comprehended. The possibility of developing value-based healthcare applied to Primary Care in the context of Telemedicine is also intriguing and something I would most appreciate to be a part of.
