Atribuições dos técnicos em saúde bucal na Estratégia Saúde da Família no estado de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The oral health technician (OHT) composes the oral health team of the Brazilian Family Health Strategy (FHS). The inclusion of this professional involves actions of disease prevention and oral health protection, promotion and recovery on both the individual and collective levels. A number of countries have human resources with a similar profile to that of the OHT, such as the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Portugal and Australia. Each country has its own regulatory procedures regarding the abilities and attributions of these professionals. The aim of the present study was to report how the professionalization process of OHTs came about in Brazil through to the issuance of law 11.988/2008, which legalized the work of OHTs. Based on this legislation, an analysis was carried out of the work these professionals execute in the FHS in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in order to determine whether there is coherence with the activities carried out by the family health teams. The methodological procedures involved a review of the literature in order to describe the journey of OHTs in Brazil until the legalization of the profession and a descriptive quantitative study reporting the attributions of OHTs. For the latter, a telephone survey was used to contact OHTs working within the FHS of Minas Gerais, with the administration of a questionnaire for data acquisition. The randomized representative sample consisted of 231 OHTs who composed FHS modality II. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics with the aid of the SPSS program for Windows (version 17.0) and the calculation of proportions, central tendency measures and respective 95% confidence intervals. The results revealed that a number of corporative interests in dentistry have influenced the professionalization process of OHTs, especially with regard to the work these professionals execute in the clinic, which may explain the delay in the approval of law 11.889/2008. With regard to the clinical attributions performed by OHTs in the FHS, 71.6% performed crown polishing, 63.2% performed the scraping of calculus and only 14.7% blended and inserted restorative materials. Regarding collective preventive actions, all OHT participated in educational actions concerning health promotion and the prevention of oral diseases, 99.0% demonstrated oral hygiene techniques, 96.6% administered topical fluoride, 77.9% made visits to homes and 96.6% performed collective actions, especially at schools. The findings of the present investigation indicate that the profile of the OHT within the FHS denotes a lesser possibility of the contribution of these professionals in individual clinical care, especially with regard to restorative procedures, and an increasing contribution to disease prevention and health promotion.