Autocuidado de saúde e o cuidado do outro na pandemia de COVID-19: representações sociais e práticas em interação

Abstract

The general objective of this study was to analyze the social representations of people in society in general regarding self-health care and care for others and their relationships with the protection practices developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following thesis was defined: The social representation of self-care and the care of others establishes a relationship of dependence with health self-care practices, in the context of COVID-19, contributing to a positive or negative perception of health. This is a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study based on the Theory of Social Representations in its structural and procedural approaches. 623 people from society participated in the study, selected using the snowball technique, with a non-probabilistic sample. The majority of the group is female f=476 (76.4%), aged less than or equal to 29 years f=162 (26%), who reside in the Northeast region f=280 (44.9%) and who have completed higher education f=470 (75.4%). Data collection occurred through self-administration of the socioeconomic questionnaire and the technique of free evocation of words to the inductive term “Care for people with COVID-19”, in 2020, through online collection. A subsample of 31 participants was randomly selected to participate in the semi-structured interviews that took place online. The analysis of data from the socioeconomic questionnaire, free evocations of words and the semi-structured interview occurred, respectively, through descriptive statistical analysis with the aid of Excel and SPSS software; the construction of the framework of four houses equipped with the EVOC software; and the lexical analysis technique implemented by the Alceste software. The results show, in the analysis of the structure of the representation of “care for people with COVID-19” in the possible central nucleus, the terms social isolation, care, PPE, pragmatic elements, and love and fear, normative elements. The term social isolation seems to define the identity of caring for people with COVID-19. The first periphery is made up of the terms solidarity, empathy, contagion, mission, hospital-uti and attention. The second periphery encompasses the elements of courage, knowledge-ignorance. The contrast zone encompasses the terms protection, hygiene, mask, risk and insecurity. It was identified that the social representation of care for people with COVID-19 is based on the practice of preventive care, especially social isolation, aiming at self-care and care for others in preventing COVID-19. Such preventive care may be linked to the fear of contamination by the virus, although care is an expression of love, attention and solidarity. In the lexical analysis, it was identified that self-care is referred to as health care, manifested through the adoption of preventive measures, especially social isolation, in addition to physical-bodily and affective-relational care. Confirming the thesis of this research, it is concluded that the social representation of self-care and care for others establishes a relationship of dependence with health self-care practices in the context of COVID-19, therefore representing practices in interaction.