Factors that Facilitate and Difficult the Permanent Health Education Activity

Abstract

Summary: Introduction: Permanent Education in Health (EPS) is an educational process that articulates service, teaching, health and teaching, collaborating for professional growth, social control and management. Objective: To identify the factors that facilitate and hinder the EPS activities developed by the multiprofessional team in the Family Health Units (FHU). Methodology: Qualitative research based on Dialectic Hermeneutics. Fifty professionals participated, from the multiprofessional teams of the FHU, from the interior of São Paulo in Brazil, through semi-structured interviews. Results: The analysis of the senses showed two analytical categories: factors that facilitate the activities of EPS-team meetings, exchanges of information and different knowledge, participation of the population, collaborators, coordinators, management and the multidisciplinary team; factors that hinder EPS activities-lack of understanding of the EPS process, lack of interest from some employees, disregard of the professionals' needs by managers and lack of participation by the multiprofessional team in EPS. Conclusions: The qualitative approach of the research and the theoretical foundation supported by Hermeneutics-Dialectics enabled the presentation of the factors that support and prevent the EPS activities developed by the multiprofessional team in the USF and that can subsidize the necessary adjustments.