Toward an embodied pedagogy of care in specialist training in Chile: radical care and humanization in public health.

Abstract

The training of health specialists is a strategic component for the operational, human, and territorial sustainability of the public health system. However, Chilean university training models-primarily oriented toward technical efficiency-have tended to marginalize the relational and ethical dimensions of care, weakening the experience of care and diminishing trust in health institutions. From a theoretical-reflective perspective, this article explores the possibilities and tensions that arise when transferring the principles of radical care and their performative version, Embodying Radical Care to the field of specialist medical training in Chile, proposing that these approaches may contribute to reconfiguring medical training processes toward an embodied ethics of care. From this perspective, the article develops a comparative analysis of theoretical approaches that integrates care ethics, the politics of interdependence, and performative practice. Incorporating these perspectives could strengthen relational and affective competencies in clinical teaching, deepening the learning process through the ethics of radical care and recognizing bodily experience and ethical sensitivity as dimensions of professional formation. At the same time, these principles could improve the experience of care by fostering a culture that acknowledges interdependence among people, institutions, and territories, thereby consolidating a more humane and sustainable medical practice. Ultimately, this reflection seeks to offer conceptual foundations for public policies on training and humanization in health that understand care not merely as a technical act, but as an ethical, political, and aesthetic practice essential for the sustainability of the health system.