[Community health as a determinant of the nursing curriculum].

This paper summarizes the experience acquired under the first university-level program for the basic training of nurses in Peru. It describes the gradual refining of the academic curriculum, which was designed not only to train people as competent professionals, but also to acquaint them with the country's basic social problems. Four levels of teaching-learning were defined in wide-ranging discussions in which various academic and professional sectors connected with the health field participated. Establishing a process of steps of increasing complexity has considerably facilitated the integration of community health, the scientific method, and mental health into the structure of the curriculum. The practice of community nursing was heavily emphasized, and it was endeavored to strike a balance between hospital experience and work in communities themselves. The program includes specific studies community groups spanning such aspects as control of the more common disease, epidemiologic surveillance, and accident and disaster prevention. Practical work in community health care earns the same credit as hospital internship. The paper closes with a description of the experience of a specific program conducted in the self-managed city of Villa El Salvador under an agreement between the community and the university. The writer also notes that the intense campaign to publicize the program is having an effect because most nurse-training institutions in Peru are tending to add community nursing to their curricula.