Physiology education and research in the European Higher Education System — a case study from Portugal
Authors: Monteiro Rodrigues Luis , Guerreiro Iris , Guerreiro Vera , Gregorio Joao 
Published: May 2024

The “Future of Physiology” has become a recurring theme worldwide in discussions amongst Physiology organizations. The Bologna Process fostered a proper higher education environment within Europe, comparable with the USA and UK. This paper presents a current view of Physiology teaching within Portugal, an EU member state and part of the European High Education Area (EHEA). Data was sourced from the governmental agency DGES (from September to November 2022) to identify institutions and curricula featuring disciplines (CU/D) aligned with human Physiology. The teaching modalities, hours, and credits for Human Physiology disciplines were obtained from the institutions’ websites, yielding a database with 365 courses/degrees and 764 distinct Physiology CU/D. In the second stage, a bibliometric analysis of the lecturers’ scientific production from 2017-2022 was conducted using the VOSviewer v 1.6.19 to construct and visualize the key word co-occurrence networks and clusters. A thematic analysis of words in each cluster was then performed to identify common themes. Important divergences appeared, particularly between universities and technical colleges. In technical colleges, Physiology is prevalent in the first year, while in universities, Physiology-related CU/Ds are sequentially present from the first year until late in the course, indicating a progression in advanced knowledge and its application. These differences might be related to the different structural organization of these institutions and likely reflect the differences between facilities, available teaching-learning instruments, and staff preparation. The bibliometric analysis revealed considerable asymmetries in the scientific profile of the teaching staff. revealed Significant differences between university and technical colleges’ scientific production are clear: staff with relevant production were affliated with reference university centers or research units. A pronounced concentration of research interests in two primary domains, classified in the thematic analysis as Medical Physiology and Lifestyle Physiology, was found, with researchers' preferences focusing on biomedical research and innovation, cardiovascular function, sport performance, and well-being. These findings might be common within the EHEA, and do not raise any immediate concerns regarding Physiology as a discipline at present. On the contrary, they suggest that Physiology is clearly recognized as important in health education. Physiology teaching and learning must not lose sight of its primary role as an an integrated science of life required to shape the approach and rationale applied to problems requiring our understanding of health and disease, Physiology teaching and learning continue to be critical in human health education and research.

This work is financed by national funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the UIDB/04567/2020 and UIDP/ 04567/2020 projects. João Gregório is funded by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) Scientific Employment Stimulus contract with the reference number CEEC/CBIOS/EPH/2018.

This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.