Barreiras de acesso à saúde em Alagoas: do enfrentamento à superação

Abstract

Introduction: Access to the health service is the factor that mediates the relationship between the demand and the user's entry into the health service, with the various types of difficulties present in these so-called access barriers. Since the Primary Health Care (PHC) is one of the main entrances for the user and considering the entrances and setbacks imposed on it, it is important to think that these access barriers are present. Objectives: analyze the access to health present in Primary Health Care; identify barriers and describe the confrontation of barriers to access to health. Methodology: This is an exploratory and descriptive study with a qualitative approach, linked to the national research entitled "Nursing Practices in the Context of Primary Health Care (PHC): National Study of Mixed Methods". Data collection was carried out in the period from November 2020 to March 2021, through online interviews with nurses from Alagoas’s municipalities with adjacent intermediate typology, selected for this study. The recordings were transcribed and analyzed based on the organization of the content, with the emergence of the Access Barriers category and its subcategories (Types of barriers). Results: In this study, health access barriers were identified in: geographic; financial; information and organizational. In addition, it could be inferred that the organizational barrier stands out in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, both for the organization of health services and for the issue of social distancing. Regarding the confrontation of access barriers, home visits, teleconsultation, changing the opening hours, taking advantage of the user's presence for other reasons for a holistic care stand out. Final considerations: The present work made it possible to reveal the access to health in the PHC of Alagoas municipalities with adjacent intermediate typology, the access barriers and how users and the health team faced these barriers.