Ações educativas em contracepção: teoria e prática dos profissionais de saúde.

Abstract

The aim of this research is to analyze the repercussions of the Course PAISM/Contraception in the practices, understandings and perceptions of the professionals who develop educational activities in contraceptive actions, concerning health and rights in the ambit of sexuality, reproduction and gender; it also aims to identify, through the professionals report, knowledge about the history of PAISM and family planning, the juridical and normative framework, the thematic and methodology of educational work. It is a descriptive study, with an ethnographic approach. The corpus for analysis was composed of the record of participating observation, interviews and documental analysis. The empirical investigation figured on three settings of the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Health Ministry: Espaço Mulher, educational groups for contraception in two Basic Health Units, and groups coordinated by professionals who were trained at the referred course; as informants, there were seven nurses and four social assistants. According to the informants report, the change in view about some of the themes approached and the acquisition of new information as a possibility of change in their practices, were the main contributions of the course. This thesis has verified partial awareness on the question of sexual and reproductive rights; of PAISM historic importance, its juridical and normative framework. Concerning the question of abortion, the predominant discourse was against its practice, generally in view of arguments of a religious nature. Sexuality, for most informants, is relational and beyond sex, an expression typically proper to the female gender. The dominant note of the informants discourse was restricted to the ambit of informative actions on prevention of pregnancy and diseases, and to the humanitarian sphere, in a rhetoric near to the discourse of religious Christian moral. The Christian ethics of acquiescence and tolerance to individual freedom does not depend upon religious belonging and, in a way, it is possible to articulate this ethos to the discourse of sexual and reproductive rights. In spite of presenting a Christian-founded discourse (tolerance, understanding and acquiescence) and even though not having a political and/or academic position in the sphere of rights or, furthermore, not recognizing some of them, the informants appear to have a practice which, in some way, expresses an attitude of respect. Nonetheless, the approach to sexual and reproductive rights must be more explicit and further discussed in the development courses. The professionals who act in educational groups for contraception are social actors who can/must contribute to guarantee the sexual and reproductive rights, in order for the much acclaimed notion of health integrity to be reached. However, for this to happen, it is necessary that the practices be structured in accordance to the cognitive emancipation mark (BONAN, 2005), in such a way as to avoid the upholding of social and gender iniquities, principally regarding the questions of sexuality and reproduction. This challenge is thus set to the managers of attention to women s health and to the organs of professional health studies.