As representações sociais da COVID-19 e do cuidado à pessoa com coronavírus para os profissionais na atenção básica

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the social representations of COVID-19 and care for people with coronavirus for professionals in primary care. This is a field study, exploratory, and descriptive, with a qualitative methodological approach, based on the Theory of Social Representations, using the Structural Approach. The scenarios chosen for this study were the Primary Care Services of an interior city, in the Middle Paraíba region, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The study participants were health professionals who worked on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. For data collection, a socioeconomic identification questionnaire, a free word evocation questionnaire for the inducing terms COVID-19 and care for the person with COVID-19, and semi-structured interviews were used. Data analysis was carried out from the construction and interpretation of the four-house chart, instrumentalized by the EVOC 2005 software, accompanied by semantic contextualization of the words evoked from excerpts from the interviews. In the analysis of COVID-19, the following results were found: in the upper left quadrant, the terms were observed: death, fear, symptoms, anxiety-anguish, and pandemic. In the upper right quadrant: prevention, isolation, and vaccine. In the lower right quadrant: hospital-ICU, overload, economic-social crisis, and social isolation. In the lower left quadrant: information-disinformation, suffering, neglect, mismanagement, and illness. In the social representation of care for people with coronavirus, the following terms were found: in the upper left quadrant: isolation, mask, alcohol-gel, attention, and washing hands. In the upper right quadrant: social isolation, hygiene, guidance, vaccine, empathy, treatment, symptoms, and care. In the lower right quadrant: fear, test, hospital-ICU, information-disinformation, food, rest, embracement, and mental health. In the lower left quadrant: affection, courage, PPE, and prevention. The social representation of COVID-19 is linked to the feelings aroused by the disease, the forms of prevention and the social, political, and work process notes that occurred in the development of the pandemic. The representation of care for people with coronavirus is linked to self-care, preventive measures, and assistance associated with the disease. In this way, it can be highlighted that the social representation of COVID-19, despite being full of feelings, is configured in the professional inserted in the care network, in the health system; while the representation of care shows the professional as the sole caregiver of each patient, respecting their individualities. It is concluded that these representations point to two distinct health approaches, collective health actions, aimed at the public and those of individual health, aimed at rescuing people's health.