Comunicação nas práticas de coordenação de grupos socioeducativos na estratégia de saúde da família

Abstract

The objective of this study is to reveal the content and form of communication of thecoordinator of socio-educational groups in the Family Health Strategy. This is aqualitative, descriptive, exploratory research, developed with twenty-fivecoordinators of socio-educational groups that assist the elderly population,distributed in eight basic health units of two Sanitary Districts of Belo Horizonte,Brazil. The data collection was done from March to July 2009, and consisted of nonparticipantobservation and in-depth semi-open interview. To interpret the data theContent Analysis of Bardin and the Theoretical Model of Forrest were used. Theinformation was organized in seven thematic numbers: Group atmosphere as adeterminant factor to the communication between coordinator and members; Thediversity of communication channels backers of messages in the socio-educationalgroups; The content dynamicity discussed in the socio-educational groups; Theverbal communication of the coordinator according to Forrest; I wanted to knowwhat the person was showing me: the reading of the group based on non-verbalcommunication; The group as a listening space; Communicational aspects hinderingand facilitating in the interaction between coordinator and group. The analysis ofthese thematic groups showed that, despite the encouragement towards theadoption of healthy lifestyles, the discursive practice of the coordinators isprescriptive and behaviorist, out of tune with the philosophical and conceptualframework of health promotion. Accordingly, there was a predominance ofsubcategory giving information that is associated with the guidelines of healthprofessionals on the adoption of behaviors for disease prevention, based onknowledge transfer so vertical. It is necessary to develop many listening processes inthe group, taking into account its socio-cultural dimension, to reveal deeper issuesthan assume the discursive practices of coordinators who have founded their verticalpublic health policy actions. It is possible to perceive that the communication, in thegroup context, it should draw on an approach that values the expression of theparticipant, regarding not only health in its physical dimension, but also the life ofeach individual, which can best be exploited by subcategories that allow members ofthe group to verbalize their perceptions, as is the case for subcategories likerecognizing the feelings and verbalizing thoughts implied. It is believed that thisstudy can base the planning of workshops with the Family Health teams, in search ofdifferent forms and media to accomplish the dialogic action and the interactionspaces for groups focused on building new forms of critical awareness in relation topublic and collective interests.