Concepções sobre a saúde e doença : um estudo envolvendo usuárias de uma unidade do Programa Saúde da Família

Abstract

The Paraná River basin is one of the most important of Brazil and deserves to be studied not only by its physical and biological aspects but, also by the special attention to the population. Many studies have been performed in this place due to its importance, thus used as basis and subsidy to the development of this present paper. A study was performed in Porto Rico Municipality located in the Northwest region of Paraná State on the boards of Paraná River. This study aims to know and understand the conceptions about the health-disease process that are involved in the actions of the professionals and users of the health System of the Family Health Program Unit of Porto Rico. It is an exploratory descriptive study based on the Social Representations Theory. The study was performed in three parts. In the first was performed a study about reasons of medical of the FHPU of Porto Rico with data collected in may, June, July and August of 2004. In the second part observations were made from the present routine following (activities in the unit and visits to the houses of the region dwellers) and talk with the professionals. In the third part the Social Representations Theory was used to try to understand the shared conceptions about health and disease by the users that most attended the unit of Porto Rico. Bardin theorical reference of content analysis was used to analyze the data. The results show that both the presence of the disease and the difficulties for its cure are seen as normal and almost inevitable. Despite the search for new advances in the comprehension of health and disease in a conception that takes into consideration the human being, with his bio - physic - social and cognitive aspects, the professional view of the Unit and the users are still centered essentially in the identification and treatment of the Disease. It is a practice based on the Bilogicist model. It was summarized, with the data collected, that both the professionals and the users of the Family Health program Unit devote mainly to the cure of the diseases that have already shown instead of preventing or promoting Health.