O cirurgião-dentista e o trabalho interprofissional na Estratégia Saúde da Família

Abstract

Interprofessional work represents the search for comprehensive care, in which different professions work together and in interdependence, sharing common goals, recognizing the importance of each other and forming a team identity. This study aimed to analyze dentists' understanding of interprofessional work, verify whether they were involved in interprofessional practices with their teams, analyze the potential and difficulties encountered, in addition to identifying whether there is a presence of interprofessional health education in the training of these professionals. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study with quantitative-qualitative approaches, carried out with 33 dentists working in the Family Health Strategy of a municipality in the metropolitan region of Natal/RN. As collection instruments, an electronic questionnaire prepared by the author was used with questions about interprofessional practices and education using the Likert scale and a semi-structured interview script with questions about the professional profile, and interprofessional work with its potential and difficulties, including the impacts of COVID-19. Data collection was carried out in February and March 2022, after carrying out a pilot study. The quantitative data obtained were tabulated and analyzed descriptively in Microsoft Excel with the support of the free software R Studio for drawing up the graphs; the qualitative ones were transcribed and submitted to Bardin's content analysis. The results showed that interprofessional practices are already part of dentists' work processes, such as home visits and participation in care groups, while isolated work and hierarchy within teams make these practices difficult. Most respondents understand what interprofessional work is and described as potentialities: comprehensive care, information sharing, dialogue and professional interest. As obstacles, the lack of management incentives, the lack of inputs and infrastructure, in addition to the absence of interprofessional training, were also reported. The importance of interprofessionality was experienced in the COVID-19 pandemic, with the participation of dentists in activities with other professionals, despite specific dental losses. Learning and interprofessional practices aim to develop critical reflections that have a positive impact on work processes. However, there is a need for interest and support from those involved in the health system: professionals, managers and users, so that interprofessionality is widespread and effective.