Teaching work in Medicine at a federal university in the Southern region Brazil

Abstract Brazilian public policies approach the international paradigm of interaction between training and health systems advocating for a general medical training, linked to the population’s epidemiological profile, and reverberating on teaching work. This work sought to analyze perceptions about teaching and professional perspectives of professors of the medicine course at a federal university. This is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach, with a questionnaire, documentary and bibliographic research, and analysis from the perspective of hermeneutics-dialectic. From the results, four categories of analysis were constructed that describe the teaching work from the perspective of its actors: training markers for teaching (the repertoire of knowledge of teaching practice is experiential); imaginaries attributed to teaching (conflict with the ideal image previously conceived); confrontations in the teaching routine (the generalist training recommended has less social recognition); teaching and its horizon (search for greater qualification). The investments - personal and institutional - have not been sufficient in face of aspects that generate dissatisfaction and the perception of unpreparedness of teachers in the daily routine of medical training, denouncing a certain discomfort among professors. It can be said that the teaching work is fundamental for the change in training, and that the perception of the actors of a concrete experience points out deficits in pedagogical training and in permanent education.