Avaliação da assistência à criança na atenção primária à saúde, sob a perspectiva do usuário, em um município de médio porte de Minas Gerais

Abstract

Introduction: Children's health is a strategic area for Primary Health Care (PHC) due to the vulnerability of children to various diseases and to the prevalence of negative health outcomes in this population. The assessment of PHC forms an essential practice for the quality of pediatric health care. Objectives: a) general: Evaluate children's health care in PHC, from the user's perspective, b) specific: 1-Evaluate the presence and extent of PHC attributes, in caring for the child, by Primary Health Care Units (PHCUs), by stratified PHCU groups, and for the municipality, and 2-Compare the results of the PHC attribute scores between PHCUs with different categories of care. Methodology: a cross-sectional study conducted in the PHCUs in the urban area of the Municipality of Juiz de Fora, MG, stratified according to the care model offered in PHCUs with Family Health (PHCU-FH), Community Agents Program (PHCU-CAP), and traditional Model (PHCU-traditional). Research subjects: 171 people were interviewed (initially 180, but there were 9 withdrawals) between May 20, 2013 and August 9, 2013, selected according to the following criteria: a) Inclusion: parents or caregivers of children under five years old, users of the Unified Health System and b) Exclusion: individuals who did not present physical/mental conditions to respond to the questionnaires and those who resided outside the municipality of the study. Data Collection Instruments: 1) Primary Care Assessment Tool-Brazil, child version, and 2) Socio-Demographic Data Protocol for characterization of the respondents and the children. Study variables: a) Predictors: PHC attributes and caregiver characteristics, and b) Outcome: satisfactory or unsatisfactory PHC attribute scores for the PHCUs, for the PHCU groups stratified according care model, and for the municipality. Data analysis: performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 15. In the descriptive analysis, the PHC attribute scores were calculated for the PHCUs, for the PHCU groups, and for the municipality. For inferential analysis, a nonparametric test was applied to compare the PHCU-FH scores with the PHCU-traditional and PHCU-CAP (evaluated together), adopting a p-value < 0.05. Results: in the descriptive analysis, only the Information-Coordination System attribute obtained a satisfactory score. Furthermore, the category of the PHCUs was not an aspect that influenced the evaluation of the PHC attributes. While in the inferential analysis, it is noteworthy that for the FH PHCUs, the Services Available-Comprehensiveness, Family Orientation, Community Orientation, and Information-Coordination Systems attributes obtained score values higher than the traditional/CAP PHCUs. Conclusion: There was a perceptible need to seek alternatives to improve the operational and effectiveness capacity of PHC services, from the point of view of their attributes.