Análise da qualidade de vida e trabalho dos agentes comunitários de saúde de sobral, ceará

Abstract

The implementation of the Family Health Strategy (FHS), preceded by the Communitarian Health Agents Program (CHAP), aimed the reorientation of the health assistance model in Brazil. Since then, with the creation of this new category, the work process performed by the family health teams has as main link with the community, the Communitarian Health Agents (CHA). They daily need to perform mediation among conflicts, other professionals of the strategy program, attend diverse requests, qualify the performance along with other professionals, keep a bond with the users and the community, where they also live and have their leisure activities. Due to this bond, among other characteristics, some studies point that the CHA have vulnerability in terms of mental and physical health and life quality. The efforts expended during the performance of the work sometimes are not corresponded in a suitable compensation, generating feelings of devaluation and low self-esteem. Facing these arguments and by our perception in FHS, we had as general objective: to analyze the health quality and the CHA’s work in Sobral, Ceará; and as specific objectives: to measure the global life quality and its domains regarding to the CHA; verify the effort and compensation related to the work performed by the CHA and correlate the rates of effort-compensation with the general life quality and the professional’s domains. The methodology was quantitative (sectional study) with application of two instruments already translated and validated to Brazil: the WHOQOL Bref, that measures life quality, and the EffortCompensation Imbalance Scale, that analyzes the work and its aspects, and a socio-demographic questionnaire. Our population consists of 387 CHA, the sample was of 232 CHA, configuring representative as an error margin of 5 percentage points. It was performed from January of 2011 to March of 2012, and approved by the Universidade Estadual Vale do Acaraú (UVA)’s Ethical Committee, under CAAE 0056.0.039.000-11. Our results highlighted that the CHA performed home visits (100%) among other activities. The rate of effort-compensation indicates imbalance to 53,44% of the CHA, with medium score of 1,26 (±0,77DP). The score of global life quality was of 59,53 (±18,46DP), having the domain of Social Relations with the highest punctuation (70,26) with standard deviation (SD) of ±16,66. The findings support our hypothesis that assumes the CHA’s work causes imbalance between the effort expended during the performance of the work and the compensation received and, this imbalance affects the CHA’s life quality, mainly regarding to the psychological domain. Therefore, we verified the importance of the critical observation of the CHA’s work process as a way to avoid a possible illness due to work, guaranteeing health promotion, including the HFS workers. There is the necessity of valuing the work performed, through continued approach in the perspective of taking care of the caregiver.