Vivências de prazer e sofrimento no trabalho de agentes comunitários de saúde

Abstract

In Brazil, among the three health care models present in the primary health care (PHC), is the Program of Community Health Agents. It's necessary to highlight the importance of Community Health Agents (CHA) for the PHC in the country, being involved in all kinds of work contexts, peculiarities and situations, justifying conducting research concerning the health of these professionals. The aim of this study was to discuss the experiences of pleasure and suffering in the work of the CHA from the PHC of Juiz de Fora city and it's relation to the organization of work (OW) and physical and psychosocial damage reported. It's a cross-sectional, quantitative study with a random sample of 279 CHA, where 67 didn't participate because it met the exclusion criteria, totaling 212 professionals evaluated. Data collection was conducted between July and October 2015 and was used as an instrument three scales of the Inventory of Work and Risk of Illness (IWRI). The sample was predominantly composed of women (91.5%) with mean age of 44 years (standard deviation 9.9), married or in a stable relationship (55.5%) and whose working time in PHC is 11 to 15 years (47.6%). In the results, the Rating Scale of the Work Context (RSWC) presented its three areas assessed as critical, and some items, concerning the OW and working conditions were classified as serious. The Scale Assessment of Damage Related to Work (SADRW) presented his three domains assessed as bearable, corresponding to the best positive assessment to this scale. But items related to body aches and legs were assessed as serious by the CHA. In Scale of Indicators of the Pleasure and Suffering at Work (SIPSW), the domains measuring the pleasure were classified as satisfactory. Among the items of these domains, are highlighted those relating to identification with the work and proud to practice their profession, with high positive score means, as well as those relating to trust between colleagues, motivation, appreciation and recognition, classified as critical and, therefore, potential factors of suffering. Matters relating to the suffering at work showed critical result. The Professional Burnout domain was the one with the most negative assessment, especially the section "Overload", considered to be serious. Regarding the association between the domains of pleasure and suffering with the other areas of RSWC and SADRW and sociodemographic data and working time in the PHC, we have that the greater the age of the CHA, the higher their professional achievement. Also an association between freedom of expression and marital status was verified, however, was unable to find the differences by statistical analysis. On the correlations between the domains of SIPSW and other scales, we find that the greater the lack of recognition, the higher the burnout and that the greater the professional burnout of the CHA, the greater will be their psychological damage, with strong correlations. Regular correlations between the domains were also found: between professional burnout and physical damage and between lack of recognition and psychological damage. We conclude that the CHA experience pleasure in work satisfactorily and suffering critically. The Professional Burnout domain, besides being the most negatively rated in SIPSW, is the one with the strongest correlations. It's hoped that this work presents a mental health profile of CHA in relation to the experiences of pleasure and suffering and reinforce the need for more studies addressing these workers so important to the PHC in Brazil.