Medical teaching in Brazilian public institutions and the needs of elderly people

INTRODUCTION: Age distribution in Brazil has changed a lot in the last 50 years, with significant increase in elderly population. Despite this scenario, few medical schools offer discipline of Geriatrics in their curricula. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate and to compare the relationship between the percentage of elderly population by Brazilian geographic region and specific teaching of Geriatrics in undergraduate medical courses. METHODS: It was analyzed curricula of 77 Medicine courses of public higher education institutions. The relationship between specific teaching of Geriatrics and the percentage of elderly Brazilian region was found by dividing the percentage of courses with such discipline by the total elderly population by region in Brazil. The collected data were stored and analyzed by the software Microsoft Excel® 2010. RESULTS: The South region had the best result of this relationship, with six (46.2%) of 13 courses analyzed having that specific teaching; the North was the second one with two (20%) courses of the 10 examined; then, were the Northeast and Southeast regions with seven (29.2%) of the 24 courses evaluated in each region, and finally, the Midwest region with one (16.7%) of six evaluated. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that it is necessary an overhaul of current curricula, adapting it to the reality of the population of each region in order to graduate more prepared physicians to treat the aging population demands.