Knowledge and practices of Primary Care professionals on diabetic neuropathy: study of social representations.

Erlon Gabriel Rego De Andrade,Alexandre Aguiar Pereira,Ivaneide Leal Ataíde Rodrigues,Bruna Alessandra Costa E Silva Panarra,Marcandra Nogueira De Almeida Santos,Laura Maria Vidal Nogueira,Sidney De Assis Da Serra Braga

doi:10.1590/0034-7167-2020-0104

Abstract

to analyze the knowledge and practices of Primary Health Care professionals about diabetic neuropathy through their social representations. a qualitative, descriptive study, anchored in the procedural aspect of the Theory of Social Representations. It was carried out in four Family Health Units in Belém-Pará, with 31 professionals from four health teams. Data were produced by individual semi-structured interviews, and the corpus was submitted to content analysis. two thematic categories were defined, showing the participants' understanding and imagination about neuropathy, as well as the biopsychosocial repercussions of this complication in patients' daily lives. The multidisciplinary practices developed in the context of disease treatment/prevention and the consequences of this performance were also shown. professionals' representations are anchored in neuropathy occurrence due to the deficient standard of care for themselves by patients, which results in the team's surpassing care attitude as an alternative to illness' challenges.

Highlights

Primary Health Care (PHC) leads promotion, protection, diagnosis, treatment and recovery actions in the first level of care
Theory of Social Representations (TSR) refers to the understanding of a particular form of knowledge that fulfills the function of guiding behaviors and understandings between people
As for training time, among the higher education categories, there was a variation from 1 to 13 years for nurses, from 1 to 11 years for physicians and from 2 to 17 years for nursing technicians; 27.3% (6/22) of Community Health Workers (CHW) reported higher education and 31.8% (7/22) technical training in different fields of knowledge, whether or not they belong to the health field

Summary

Introduction

Primary Health Care (PHC) leads promotion, protection, diagnosis, treatment and recovery actions in the first level of care. Biopsychosocial health needs need to be met from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective, ratifying the joint participation of professionals from different categories and levels of education[1] In this perspective, the Ministry of Health created the government policy Family Health Strategy (FHS), with the premise of developing actions to expand and consolidate Primary Care, strengthening and being guided by bonds, humanization, continuity of care and social participation[2,3]. The number of people living with NCDs has grown, especially in developing countries, posing a major challenge to health systems[4] As part of this group, diabetes mellitus stands out, endocrinopathy that generates acute and chronic complications, among which diabetic neuropathy is relevant. The risk for the formation of ulcerative lesions in the feet, amputations, deformations and gait imbalance increases, in addition to cardiovascular changes, genitourinary and gastrointestinal systems, and sweating[5,6,7]

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