SEMANTIC CONSTRUCTION OF THE CONCEPT DOCT OR-PATIENT-RELATIONSHIP BY FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF MEDICAL-SCHOOL

The doctor-patient relationship is a transaction; it is a reciprocal i ntellectual as well as emotional interaction system. It combines what the doctor and the patient think, feel, do and receive from each other . In this study we pretend to learn about the changes that develop in the first year medical students of the Mexican National Autonomous Uni versity. After a course in medical psychology on this concept. We hope to see cognitive modifications in the teaching and learning processes . The Natural Semantic Net was is used in 7 groups selected arbitraril y. Results show that women assimilated more new terms than the men who already had a larger previous semantic net, and that after the first year, both sexes retained 40 % of the terms they had heard. It also sh ows that at the end of the course their semantic memory is significant ly increased.