Representações sociais sobre quedas construídas por idosos: um estudo no Curimataú Ocidental Paraibano.

Abstract

In the last decades the population of elderly in Brazil is increasing significantly. With the commitment of senior responsiveness intrinsic changes secondary to aging, falls now show a real public health problem, the high prevalence, consequences or high welfare costs. For the implementation of effective health care practices on the issue of episodes of falls, emerges the necessity of understanding the subjective perception that older people have about this event. Thus, the objective of this study meet the social representations about falls built for seniors; describe the socio economic and demographic characterization of the participants of the study; and propose actions in the context of nursing health education for the elderly vulnerable to occurrences of falls and those formerly involved. It consists of exploratory study of qualitative observational nature developed in 444 elderly domiciled in 5 municipalities of Curimataú, Brazil. For data collection used a semi-structured interview and free association of Words (TALP) through the inductor stimulus "Fall" and analyzed by software to build the EVOC analysis and discussion. The results show that the social representations highlighted by the elderly on fall in central core structure listed through elements such as pain (F = 146 and OME = 1.856), fracture (F = 83 and OME = 2.024), fear (F = 140, and OME = 1.814) and suffering (F = 68 and OME = 2.294). The representations are identified in the core were peripheral: sick, surgery, injury, dependency, weakness, spending, limitation, doctor, danger, trouble, spirituality and medicine, denoting a predominantly negative perception and demanding interventions that enable the prevention of this event and consequently the deconstruction and reconstruction of this social thought. In this sense, it is essential to the implementation of strategies to ensure a full and humanized assistance, especially by nursing staff, all elderly people-victims of crashes-involving the promotion, protection, treatment and rehabilitation of health, individual and collective scope in order to guide them as to potential predisposing factors for falls and fundamental care everyday, preserving, therefore, your health and quality of life.