Teaching

The Católica Medical School of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa offers an Integrated Master's Degree in Medicine, with a total of 360 ECTS and a duration of 6 academic years. The cycle of studies counts with the partnership of the Grupo Luz Saúde and the close collaboration of the University of Maastricht, the Administração Regional de Saúde de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo, the Instituto Público, the Hospital Beatriz Ângelo and the União das Misericórdias Portuguesas.

The course aims to prepare and train professionals of excellence in the practice of clinical medicine, equipped with transformative, transversal and transferable skills, acquired based on scientific thinking skills arising from the early practice of research in the course.

This training is complemented by the promotion of ethical and humanistic behaviour in the light of the humanist principles of Católica, and by the development of leadership skills so that the trainees are future transformative agents of the communities where they will practice their activity, following the educational alignment and the ethical and deontological standards approved by the countries and agencies of the European Union (Council Directive 93/16/EEC of 5 April 1993), namely those adopted by the Ordem dos Médicos Portuguesa. Unique and innovative, the course is distinguished by the following characteristics:

• Promotion of excellence in medical education, through the development of a study plan with a pedagogical methodology, already internationally validated in university centres of great prestige, with proven success and subject to constant quality monitoring by the responsible structure - Maastricht University - and by a structure specifically created for this purpose (the Centre for Medical Education), with the presentation of periodic reports evaluating the teaching-learning-evaluation process, to be discussed internally and externally with the main stakeholders;
• Promotion of research with a culture of openness to the world, cultivating the transversality of knowledge and based on the Christian humanist principles of UCP;
• Culture of proximity and centrality in the person, in the various aspects: teaching; research; orientation for the community;
• International basis of the Medicine course.

These characteristics are the added value of the programme and will enable medical training to be equipped to promote the symbiosis, in the same professional, of clinical competence and the capacity for translational research. This is only possible taking into account the way of teaching-learning-evaluating in this new cycle of studies, associated with the objective of scientific training that will allow the development of the reflective spirit and critical thinking, essential to the exercise, in excellence, of clinical practice.

The postgraduate education school - Católica Health Education aims to promote post-secondary and post-graduate education in all areas of health, offering non-degree courses in partnership with Hospital da Luz Learning Health and other entities. The programmes are based on the reconversion and updating of skills, capable of responding to the transformation of the labour markets and to the new requirements of employability and enhancing the success of the graduates in the labour market as well as promoting lifelong training.

Developed in partnership or in consortium with public and private, national and international companies and employers, the courses integrate continuous training, the deepening or acquisition of techniques and knowledge in certain professionalizing areas, or the opening of new scientific domains and the acquisition of practical or technological skills in specialized areas, in the field of Medicine and Health Sciences, namely:

• Updating Postgraduate Courses or Programmes;
• Improvement Postgraduate Courses or Programmes;
• Specialization Postgraduate Courses or Programmes;
• All other Postgraduate Courses or Programmes not defined above (advanced courses; workshops; symposiums; etc.)

The articulation between research, teaching and clinical practice within the scope of the Católica Luz Clinical Academic Centre will allow for the creation of two post-graduate programmes in biomedical research and clinical research (cycles of studies leading to a master's degree) and a doctoral programme in biomedicine (cycle of studies leading to a doctoral degree).