Caring for children in Basic Health Care (BHC): attitudes of health professionals

DOI:10.15343/0104-7809.200933.2.3

Abstract

The perspective for Children Health Care is currently aimed at the context of completeness of care as an important strategy for the
recognition of children as subjects having rights. It is therefore summed up as a challenge to make children grow and to develop in all with their
potential. From this perspective, we asked: What meanings do professionals assign to the attitudes necessary for children care in Basic Health
Care? The objective was understanding care from the meanings professionals assign to the attitudes they have when they care for children
in BHC. We used the Grounded Theory as a methodological resource for collecting and analyzing data. Managers, nurses, doctors of BHC and
mothers of children, in a total of 29 subjects, were research subjects, organized for the study, from the theoretical sampling, in five groups. Data
were collected by means of semi-structured interviews carried through in individual meetings with the participants. As a result, we obtained
the category Incorporating Mediating Attitudes To Care for Children, delimited by the subcategories: Dealing with the Subjective Dimension,
Valuing Listening and Dialog, Constructing Reliance Bonds, Establishing Bonds with the Family and Children, Being Responsible for the Other,
Practicing Alterity, Using Creativity in Care. It is a category characterized by the way professionals relate to others and with the context, by the
values in which they believe and the capacity to articulate knowledge, sensitivity and creativity, configured as an extended dimension of care
and children’s necessities.