Educação permanente na estratégia saúde da família: percepção de médicos

Abstract

Currently, there is a great difficulty in obtaining and maintaining qualified labor to work in primary care of the Unified Health System (UHS) in Brazil. It’s worth noting that the formation and qualification of this workforce is based on continuing education (CE). However, CE for health professionals, especially for doctors working in family practice teams, has been a great challenge for Brazil´s UHS in both economical and human resources aspects. High turnover rates in family care is a drawback in the care provided by primary healthcare (PHC). The permanent continuing education program (PCE) for doctors has been implemented in the estate of Minas Gerais as a strategy of the family care program, in order to qualify the workforce. The current work evaluates the PCE from the point of view of the doctors that are part of the family practice teams of the city of Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais (MG), during its duration. The data was obtained by a structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews conducted with the doctors that are part of the family practice teams as well as doctors that are not only part of the family practice but also facilitators of the PCE program. A frequency analysis was made in the data obtained by the structured questionnaires, followed by a statistical analysis. The semi structured interviews were analyzed using the Bardin method. The results shown that, according to the interviewees´ perspective, the model of permanent continuing education used by Belo Horizonte´s department of health between 2011 and 2015 attained the proposed objectives of the program. The PCE provided the participants a space for learning, exchange of experiences, improvement of care, reduction of unnecessary prescriptions and unnecessary diagnostics investigations, as well as the reduction of the feeling of professional isolation, with potential of reducing the current turnover rates. This analysis can be used as a steppingstone for the standardization of an effective strategy for the qualification of the workforce of primary health care in Brazil and contribute to studies on the high rate of turnover of doctors working in PHC.