Educação permanente para agentes comunitários de saúde no contexto de práticas educativas aos idosos

Abstract

The qualification of community health agents based on the traditional model, with knowledge transmission in a vertical manner, may be responsible for a practice that is not able to contribute to prevent and control diseases, reduce risk factors, expand knowledge about health and promote styles healthy lifestyle in the elderly. This study aimed to develop and analyze a permanent education program for Community Health Agents in the context of health education practices with the elderly. It was carried out with community agents from the urban area of the city of Uberaba, selected according to the sample calculation. This is an action research with a qualitative and quantitative approach. In the first stage of data collection, a semi-structured and self-administered questionnaire was used. Based on the analysis of the data from the previous stage, a permanent education program on educational actions in the health of the elderly directed to Community Health Agents was developed in the second stage. To assess Permanent Education, a questionnaire on the perception of professionals was used on the last day of the program. course. In a third stage, two data collections took place, 30 days and 120 days after the end of permanent education, using the Work Training Impact Scales and Transfer Support. A questionnaire was applied with one closed question and two open questions after 120 days of Permanent Education. Quantitative data were stored in Excel software and imported into the Statistical Package for the Social Science Program. The open questions of the data collection instruments were analyzed qualitatively, using the Collective Subject Discourse. One hundred and nine agents participated in the diagnosis stage, with an average age of 41.1 years and an average of 7 years working as a Community Health Agent, 97.2% were women, 65.1% said they lived with their partner or were married. The professional aspects were characterized as the majority live in the area covered by the Family Health Strategy to which they are allocated, 99.1% say they carry out health education activities with the elderly. Regarding health education with the elderly 54.1% of the professionals answered that the topic is addressed during the continuing education carried out by the team and 51.4% said that the entry course provides sufficient information to carry out health education with the elderly. Regarding the total averages of each instrument, it can be seen that the 30-day evaluations obtained training impact averages of 43.9 (± 7.5), and for the support and transfer instrument it obtained an average of 68.2 (± 10.9). For the means of these same instruments after 120 days of training, the impact instrument obtained an average equal to 44 (± 7.6) and the support instrument obtained an average of 70.2 (± 10.2), denoting an increase in perceptions as time goes by. Conclusion: With the results presented, it appears that Permanent Health Education developed in this research was understood as a stimulus for new health practices in Primary Health Care, being able to generate learning and changes in the daily work of Community Health Agents.