Avaliação das competências e habilidades dos Agentes Comunitários de Saúde para fins de coleta e gerenciamento de informação sobre pessoas com deficiências

Abstract

“An Epidemiological Picture of Disability in Paraiba” (Redpb) is a software created by the Genetics and Education Research Centre (UEPB) for registration and management of information about people with disabilities. Data will be collected by the Health Community Agents (ACSs) after a continued distance education course. This work aimed to assess the skills and abilities of ACSs for the purpose of collecting and managing information about people with disabilities. Initially, we conducted a narrative review of the literature on the involvement of ACS in scientific research and subsequently collected socioeconomic data and applied an assessment multiple choice, involving 348 ACS- 54% of those serving in Campina Grande (PB). The results show that most of these professionals are 30-49 year-old women, married, with two children and high school formation. Over 98% are public employees and 55% have more than eight years in this career. 32.2% started or finished a graduation - mostly in UEPB (66.6%), predominantly in the social sciences area (78%). The overall performance score for the assessment varied from 33 to 60 points - on a scale from 0 to 60, with the mean score of 53.44 points. This means that the ACSs were able to properly resolve 65% of issues with better performance to resolve problems related to daily life. There was a positive correlation of performance with education and a negative one related to age, number of offspring and the time since formal education completion. It was evident, therefore, the yet unexplored potential of the ACS participation as a collector / informant of data in scientific research. This insertion may contribute to significantly expand the scope of the sampled populations and generalizations width of these studies.