This paper encompasses the discussion about the forms of organization of pedagogical practices developed in the undergraduate program at the School of Medicine at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). The study ambiance involves university teaching and health policies that have prevailed in Brazil from the 1970 s until today. The research stemmed from two questions: the effect of physical-spatial change on concepts that underlie the medical formation among former faculty members (at Praia Vermelha building in the neighborhood of Urca); secondly, the guiding logics that prevailed in the two different periods. From a methodological viewpoint, I worked with oral reports that followed the life story of 21 faculty members who had come from Praia Vermelha, attempting to identify the meaning of change related to the pedagogical project at the School of Medicine at UFRJ in their narratives and the attitudes they adopted to cope with the effects produced by such changes in the analysis of their studies and life story. Documents involving medical training, health policies and university teaching issues became essential references for a map of the undergraduate medical education in our country, especially after the University Reform in 1968. Pierre Bourdieu was a central interlocutor for the development of the research. The potential of concepts such as habitus, capital and field allowed us to envisage the principle of historical action within the relationship of two social states: the objective history of things, in the form of institutions, and the history incarnated in bodies in the form of durable dispositions, the habitus (Bourdieu, 1994), in our case the constitution of a teaching habitus. Struggles and conflicts for position take over concerning the concepts at the School of Medicine at UFRJ were gradually mapped and helped reveal the correlation of forces that prevailed in the institution since the 1960 s. The work is structured around three guide lines: the transfer from Praia Vermelha to the premises on Fundão Island and the consequences of that physical-spatial change to the power shift in the recess of the School of Medicine and, ultimately, the University as a whole; the procedures that applied to faculty members during the admission process in the studied period, to mention the effects of the university reform on their professional careers, on the representation of knowledge and scholarship which, together with habitus, make up the education of the Medicine Professor; firstly the professional education offered by the Medical School, which inserts it in the historical context of pedagogical practices described in medical education literature; and secondly the effect health policies had on the labor market structure in that field. The School of Medicine has been making efforts to (i) integrate its curriculum based on interdepartmental initiatives; (ii) increase the number of practical activities; (iii) place the students within the basic net of health services; (iv) enforce compulsory medical internship in essential areas; (v) discuss doctor-patient relationships in a specific discipline. Nevertheless, in spite of those efforts, the results indicate contradictions between their intended effects and their efficacy. So, a largely hospital-oriented focus has prevailed, fostering an approach that privileges specialized treatment of diseases with the intense application of technological resources. This approach opposes recommendations which prescribe medical practices centered on disease prevention. The appeal of medical specialists is that they have more prestige and better rates of pay; therefore the professors need to dedicate time to research as a pre-requisite to conquer titles for their career improvement, and the advance of medical knowledge are the contributing factors that account for the decline of symptom-oriented medical procedures and the success of pedagogical practices that are considered innovative, such as problem-based learning and evidence-based medicine. These factors also contribute to the organization or pedagogical practices that tend to prioritize the volume of knowledge which is detrimental to the commitment and responsibility of patients follow up treatment; furthermore, they reduce patients to the condition of mere subjects within the medical teaching and research practices. Finally, the emerging issue is to question how the School of Medicine believes it can assure the general education intended if students learn and identify predominantly with model professors who are specialist doctors. This situation is as inviable as presupposing that a medical school nowadays could only have general clinicians as its faculty members.