Gestantes em situação de rua: um estudo com profissionais de saúde à luz das representações sociais

Abstract

In our social and work routine, we encounter people on the streets, however we do not always see them. The presence of a homeless woman in health services, especially pregnant women, creates conflicts and challenges for professionals and the institution. Social representation is linked in daily life and guides individual and collective practices and communication. Qualitative research aiming to learn how social representations of health professionals about pregnant women on the streets, developed with 161 professionals from a public maternity hospital in Salvador. Based on the structural approach of the Theory of Social Representations. In the production of data, the Free Word Association Test was used, composed of the inductive term "pregnant woman living on the street". The data were processed in two softwares: Ensemble of Programs Permettant l Analyze des Evocations (EVOC) and Interface of R pour les Analyzes Multidimensionnelles de Textes et de Questionnaires (IRAMUTEQ), it allows to identify elements before the social representations. The investigated group was composed mainly of women, aged between 30 and 49 years old, self-declared black / brown, Catholic, with an average of 10 years of experience in the unit. Those that obtained significance due to the frequency and average order of evocation composed the picture of four houses, revealing an image of the pregnant woman on the street as a woman who lives in "suffering", communicated to "vulnerabilities" and "drug use", "homeless", in "abandonment", soon someone who needs "humanization". The terms that made up the central core are highlighted in the similarity tree. The terms "violence, lack of assistance, public policies, children on the street, irresponsibility, prejudice and illness" appear in the table of four houses denouncing social, political, social, judicial and health issues experienced by women on the streets. The term “humanization” reveals the specificity of the investigated group linked to professional training. The research promoted exercises and actions about the problem of pregnant women living on the streets in the unit and in the academic context, raising awareness among professionals and students. It is expected that a research will contribute to reduce the knowledge gaps about the representations about pregnant women on the street, thus expanding the scientific production on this theme.