Representações sociais no cenário de uma UTI neonatal: Um estudo sobre as relações entre equipe de saúde e mães

Abstract

The birth and the experience and the hospitalization of a newborn in a neonatal intensive care unit it is a very hard moment for the parents of the newborn. Especially for the mother that usually does the direct monitoring of her baby. Taking into consideration the health professionals in relation to the mother’s experiences, considering the different social representations of the following group: (professionals and mothers), related to the process of how these representations may interfere in the relational dynamics, we investigate how social representations act in the relationship between the health equip and the family members in the context of the neonatal intensive care unit. In order to contemplate these goals, firstly we apprehended the maternal social representations about the health team of the neonatal intensive care unit. Secondly, we aim to investigate the social representations about the accompany mothers of the newborns prepared by health professionals that are working in high risk neonatal care. Two groups participated of these research: the mothers and the professionals respectively. In both studies, we used semi structured interviews, talking about the aspects involving the situation. For data analyses, we used the thematic categorical analyses suggested by Bradin. The social representations that these mothers have about the team include related to all elements such as neglect, lack of attention and delicacy, all them related to the professional practices. The social representations that the health professionals have about the accompany mother’s reveals negative and prejudiced views and normative prescriptions that defines the ideal model. The accompany mothers are seen as responsible for the prematurity of their children. It all happened due to the low-income, little knowledge about their own gestational health and also few skills to interact with the professionals. We need to think about the necessity of the redefinition of these social representations that makes harder the relationship between the health professionals and the mothers of the newborn ones.