Ensino de vigilância sanitária nos cursos de nutrição em universidades de Natal

Abstract

The study aims to describe the teaching of health surveillance in undergraduate courses in Nutrition available in public and private universities in the city of Natal. This descriptive research analyzed pedagogical projects, syllabi and curricula, that were obtained from the sites of the Ministry of Education and institutions. It was built an analytical framework considering: institutions, available documents, courses, the presence of specific discipline addressing health surveillance, and the occurrence of the term surveillance. Five institutions offer Nutrition courses and provide curricula for online consultation, three provide the pedagogical projects (1 public e 2 private), of which two offer also the syllabi (1 public and 1 private). One institution is public and has a specific discipline "Food health surveillance"; one private institution has the discipline "Hygiene and health surveillance". The expression "health surveillance" occurs 19 times in the 3 pedagogical projects: 16 in the public institution, 2 in one private institution and 1 in another private institution. The increase in the Nutritionist's attributions in the field of sanitary surveillance, according to the regulations of the Federal Nutrition Council, corroborates the teaching of Sanitary Surveillance in higher education institutions. All 3 institutions mention "Health Surveillance" as a Nutritionist's field of activity. The results showed the relevance of online availability of documents and the necessity of improving Nutritionist training in health surveillance content considering the attributions defined by the Nutrition Council in this field. Keywords: teaching, graduation, curriculum, nutritionist, health surveillance.