Saúde Ambiental: atuação dos enfermeiros da Estratégia Saúde da Família

Abstract

In the last decades, society has lived and debated about the impacts that environmental problems have caused to populations and to the planet, pointing out the need for actions that aim to minimize them. Environmental health is a branch of public health, which acts with a critical eye on these issues. This study aims to analyze the performance of nurses of the Family Health Strategy in relation to environmental health in the Basic Health Unit and its surroundings in the city of Juiz de Fora, in the southeastern region of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. This is a qualitative descriptive research, with data analysis in the light of the methodological reference of dialectical hermeneutics. Nineteen nurses who work in the Family Health Strategy participated in this study. The interviews were guided by a semi-structured script and carried out from phone calls made from March to July 2021. In the analysis, the data were transcribed, read, and ordered into units of meaning, allowing for comprehension and interpretation in a circular movement between the empirical and the theoretical. This process allowed the creation of six analytical categories: The multifactorial relationship for the sustainability of life; Developing and sustainable walk in search of health; Precariousness of infrastructure as a triggering agent of environmental problems; Social vulnerabilities, socio-environmental unassistance and coping with the coronavirus; The new living facing the pandemic of COVID-19; Nurses' actions facing the diversity of environmental health problems. The categories address the participants' perception of environmental health and sustainable development, the environmental problems identified in the territories, and the actions of these professionals in face of the problems experienced. The nurses showed an understanding of the intrinsic relationship between the environment and health, considering that the health-disease process is related to environmental issues. The most present environmental problems were those related to the lack of basic sanitation, such as the presence of garbage and its related diseases. There was a strong emphasis on social vulnerability, which triggers socio-environmental issues, directly affecting the health of the communities. The pandemic of COVID-19 emerged as a new environmental problem, which brought significant changes in Primary Health Care. Environmental education was the most evidenced action in the work of nurses, to act with the population, in the confrontation of the identified environmental problems. As nursing is a profession with emphasis on working in Primary Health Care, it is relevant the approach of this theme with these professionals, so that there is an integration of health actions that guide sustainability and environmental health.