What do medical students think about their quality of life? A qualitative study

Background: Medical education can affect medical students' physical and mental health as well as their quality of life. The aim of this study was to assess medical students' perceptions of their quality of life and its relationship with medical education. Methods: First-to sixth-year students from six Brazilian medical schools were interviewed using focus groups to explore what medical student's lives are like, factors related to increases and decreases of their quality of life during medical school, and how they deal with the difficulties in their training. Results: Students reported a variety of difficulties and crises during medical school. Factors that were reported to decrease their quality of life included competition, unprepared teachers, excessive activities, and medical school schedules that demanded exclusive dedication. Contact with pain, death and suffering and harsh social realities influence their quality of life, as well as frustrations with the program and insecurity regarding their professional future. The scarcity of time for studying, leisure activities, relationships, and rest was considered the main factor of influence. Among factors that increase quality of life are good teachers, classes with good didactic approaches, active learning methodologies, contact with patients, and efficient time management. Students also reported that meaningful relationships with family members, friends, or teachers increase their quality of life. Conclusion: Quality of teachers, curricula, healthy lifestyles related to eating habits, sleep, and physical activity modify medical students' quality of life. Lack of time due to medical school obligations was a major impact factor. Students affirm their quality of life is influenced by their medical school experiences, but they also reframe their difficulties, herein represented by their poor quality of life, understood as necessary and inherent to the process of becoming doctors.

CARBON MARKET AND INSTITUTIONS: OPPORTUNITIES IN THE SEARCH OF A NEW MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENT

Seeking alternatives for the economic system to face the several crises it has gone through lately (electrical power, cultural, financing and technological) brought about a new market involving the Kyoto Protocol signatory countries: the carbon market. The present article aims at assessing the carbon market institutional issue in Brazil by identifying the risks and opportunities inherent to the institutional agent characteristics and to that market rules. The research methodology was bibliographic and based on the analysis of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil (Comissao de Valores Mobiliarios and Bolsa Mercantil de Valores) contents. Its theoretical basis rests on concepts of the institution and the new institutional economy. The results show that in spite of the risks and institutional problems it involves, the carbon market is promising due to the opportunities create by new technologies and energies developed to achieve and sustain the capitalist system new cycle, addressed to produce a clean development.