Labor practice in the Network of Attention in Oral Health: the reality of the dental service according to the perceptions of dental surgeons

Abstract

The model of dental care production architecture  the Oral Health Network Attention (OHNA) services basing on assumptions such as ordering primary care, comprehensive care to meet the needs observed, longitudinality guarantee by secondary and tertiary care services and the coordination of referral and counter-referral flows. As OHNA is constantly changing, the importance of this exploratory qualitative research on its structuring in Goiânia, Goiás is justified, using as its object the perceptions of those who execute the services in the network. Data were obtained through two distinct focus groups with eight primary care professionals (FG1) and five secondary care professionals (FG2), and we performed the Bardin Thematic Content Analysis. At the end of this stage we obtained three thematic categories; "Knowledge about OHNA: theoretical aspects, functioning and difficulties", "Unfavorable conditions of the work process and its detriment to the structuring of the network" and "Analysis of educational processes"; being the focus of this article, the first of them. We observe that professionals face organizational and structural difficulties daily in their work environment. Thus, we conclude that although there is an incipient tendency to structuring the OHNA in the city, the efforts are disjointed and insufficient to guarantee the application of the integrality of oral health care to the users of the municipal network.