Recursos da Tecnologia Assistiva: estratégia de promoção da saúde para pessoa idosa.

Abstract

Assistive technology that intends to foster active ageing reunites all resources and services used to increase, maintain, and improve a person's functional capabilities in late­life, and, thus, promote independent living and social inclusion. The scope of this research was better understand the role of assistive technology devices in health promotion for the elderly. It is an exploratory and descriptive study of a field research, with a mixed approach, carried out with elderly groups, in places of social interaction, at the Social Service Commerce ­ SESC, Social Urban Centre ­ CSU and at Irmã Fernanda’s friends group, in Cajazeiras­PB. The sample was of 172 old persons, selected by simple random sampling. A sociodemographic questionnaire and a semi­structured interview were used to gathering data. We used the descriptive statistical method to analyze the sociodemographic data, and for the speeches, we used the content’s analysis technique, proposed by Bardin. According to the results, the most participants were women (78.5%), the predominant group aged between 60 and 69 years (56.4%), married (41.9%), income of a minimum wage through retirement (70.3%), level of education ranging from incomplete primary education (34.9%), illiteracy (14%), and arranged into family structure (23.8%). Regarding the speeches, we observed three categories: influence of assistive technology in the daily activities of elderly, contribution of assistive technology to promote active ageing and changes in the elderly life after using the assistive technology. The results showed that many old people use the assistive technology devices, which reflects in their daily activities, revealing a positive impact of assistive technology in promoting the elderly health. Although there are gaps about the lack of resources, we realized the need for health education activities on the topic, for the elderly, their families and formal or informal caregivers.