Teaching epidemiology with an applied learning method: results of an experience in a Brazilian college

INTRODUCTION:  Epidemiology is a basic discipline in the teaching of all undergraduate courses of health field in Brazil, it is offered as a discipline directly or indirectly through disciplines such as public health. The aim of this work was to offer the epidemiology with an applied method and evaluate the results in one semester from undergraduate courses of health in Edicacional Fernandópolis Fundation (São Paulo State - Brazil). METHODS:  The course was developed in three steps: the first - forty minutes expository lecture (conceptual focus), the second - 60 minutes to solve an applied problem (students grouped in teams) and, the third - solving a conceptual exercise with focus in next class. Approval and disapproval in the class was based on the average between two tests (T1 and T2) with cutoff of 6.0. Longitudinal evaluation with progress test (PT0 to PT3) in four times was used to assess students' knowledge. The proportion Z-test was used to compare other disciplines with the Epidemiology. Generalized linear model was used to evaluate the PT. RESULTS:  Were evaluated 343 students (female 79.5% - CI95% 74.7 to 84.2), mean of age 20.1 years (CI95% 19.6 to 20.7), from seven undergraduate courses, including Nursing (14.6%), Nutrition (9.0%), Pharmacy (30.6%), Physiotherapy (14.9%), Biomedicine (3.5%), Occupational Therapy (6.1%) and Phonoaudiology (21.3%). Disapproval in epidemiology was 11.4% (CI95% 8.2 to 14.6), significantly lower than Physiology (27.9% p<0,001) and Anatomy (28.9% p<0,001). Statistically significant increase (3.65) was observed among the four progress tests: PT0 3.68 (CI95% 3.55 to 3.81), PT1 4.33 (CI95% 4.14 to 4.51), PT2 6.11 (CI95% 5.88 to 6.33) and PT3 7.33 (CI95% 7.03 to7.48) p<0,001. CONCLUSIONS:  Epidemiology had a lower disapproval rate than other disciplines offered in the same semester. The students had significant changes in knowledge during the course.