Representações sociais dos profissionais de nível superior da estratégia saúde da família sobre educação em saúde

Abstract

This work it is a qualitative study based on the Theory of Social Representations aimed to apprehend the social representations of health education of higher education professionals working in Primary Health Care Units (PHCU), with Family Health Strategy (FHS). This study was developed in seven PHCU in the Southeast region of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, with 30 higher education professionals, composed of doctors, nurses, dentists and social workers, in the period July- September 2015. Data were collected through interviews, which were audio recorded and later transcribed. The speeches were organized through a textual data manager, OpenLogos, and analyzed according to thematic content analysis proposed by Bardin. The analysis of these discourses, three categories emerged: the representations of health of the FHS professionals; the representations of health education professionals: prevent disease or promote health; social representations of the educational process by the workers of the FHS with the subdivision into two subcategories: traditional educational practices and / or dialogic; strengths and weaknesses in the educational process. The findings of this research show that there is no consensus among professionals when they describe what they represent is healthy, raising aspects of both the broader concept, as restricted definitions focused on disease control and healthy bodies. Within the health education conceptions, most professionals refers to the prevention of diseases as the main objective, which shows a certain ambiguity as to consider the various social determinants of health should have health promotion actions aggregated to prevention diseases. In terms of everyday practice performed, we point out that we had good results, to analyze the educational practices developed in these scenarios have been guided by the dialogic model, which considers the active subject, values the knowledge of everyone involved in the educational process, encouraging accountability subject to the empowerment and search for autonomy as an actor and author of his own relations, still focusing on the health needs presented by users. It could be observed in the representations also the presence in daily life practices aimed at the conservative model, considering the subject as a mere receiver of information, with imposition of approaches and actions directed to specific program areas, without considering the demand of the patient. Within the elaborate social representations, we realized that professionals cite excessive aspects that may hinder the realization of educational practices, but also recognize the possibilities that they favor the educational process of the population. It is expected that these results can contribute to restructure and reframe health education in the FHS scenario, and that this dialogical model adopted by respondents is increasingly common in professional practices.