Avaliação da Atenção Primária à Saúde no contexto da pandemia Covid-19

Abstract

Primary Health Care is essential in facing the COVID-19 pandemic, due to its characteristics of territorialization and bond, having as main responsibilities in this period: health surveillance in the territories; attention to suspected or confirmed users of the disease; social support to vulnerable groups and; continuity of its own actions. The general objective of the thesis was to evaluate the Primary Health Care services during the Public Health Emergency period, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The quantitative assessment of PHC, regarding its attributes, was carried out using the PCATool-Brasil instrument, from the perspective of users and professionals (doctors and nurses) registered in the Family Health Strategy of the city of Campina Grande, in the period of August from 2021 to June 2022. The general and essential scores attributed by both users and professionals revealed services with little focus on PHC. For users, a high evaluation score was associated with low education, indicating that individuals with a lower educational level tend to be more satisfied with health services and; the highest average time of professionals in health units, an association also verified in the evaluation of professionals, which reflects the need for a bond between them and users to guarantee quality services. The attribute access to first contact had the lowest average in both studies, which suggests that services do not meet the health needs of the population in a timely manner or comprehensively. In order to understand the work process of PHC teams during the pandemic and their role in coping with COVID-19, semi-structured interviews were carried out with health professionals (doctors, nurses and dentists), submitted to content analysis, and later, to the Descending Hierarchical Classification of the IRAMUTEQ software, which led to two thematic categories: Challenges in the work process of the teams and; The role of PHC in coping with the pandemic and the organization of the care network. The scarcity of personal protective equipment, with a limitation of active professionals and the lack of physical structure of the health units were aspects considered limiting in the work process, in addition to the suspension of continuous care. PHC is understood as the gateway to services and the users' main contact with the care network, although it was clearly underused in the scenario studied. It was possible to observe how much the pandemic impacted the services and these, in turn, must face new challenges: rescuing the monitoring of the chronically ill; to intensify surveillance actions in the territory, through the work of community health agents; encourage vaccination of children, adults and the elderly, both for COVID-19 and for existing vaccines; and, mainly, to use strategies to improve user access.