Estudo da acessibilidade aos serviços odontológicos em um grupo de pacientes especiais do município de Natal/RN

Abstract

Patients with Special Needs (PSNs) are defined as individuals who have certain deviations from the normal range and for this reason require special attention and approach. The difficulty of access and service are limiting factors of dental treatment hindering. Objective: to evaluate the accessibility of special patients users of APAE - Natal / RN, from the perspective of parents or guardians, to dental services. Methods: it is an analytical, observational and cross-sectional study, carried out through a questionnaire with 20 objective questions and applied to 100 parents or guardians of APAE users / Natal. Data were entered into Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheets. Results: the most prevalent type of disability was mental (31%), 48% of subjects reported having found difficulty to be attended to in dental appointments, of these 31% said that the lack of will on the part of the patient is one of the challenges for meeting goes ahead, 55% of parents and / or guardians of the patients said they had been informed about appropriate locations for the dental care of special patients, the most suitable service site was APAE / Natal (30%). 67% said they had managed to dental care in the last search in the service offered by APAE and 33% as the lack of vacancies the reason for non-compliance. Conclusion: despite all the problems encountered, APAE/Natal, in the opinion of parents and caregivers of patients with special needs, has good accessibility for the care of patients that demand.