O Cuidado Familiar: representações sociais dos idosos diabéticos

Abstract

Care occurs in all stages of life, since the birth of someone to their aging. With old age, the body answers decrease, being vulnerable to chronic degenerative diseases. We found diabetes in this group of diseases that develop with some changes in the aging body. The consequence from the elderly living with diabetes it’s the need for ongoing care. It´s noticed then that the elderly care, especially when it has a chronic condition like mellitus diabetes, is essential. When we discuss about the informal network of help and support to the elderly, we understand that this is formed by their family, a generational system of individuals who sometimes live in the same home or next to him. We consider important to seek the speech of the elderly on the care given by his family, understanding how these cared subjects see the care provided, accomplished, understood and evaluated. We intend to study the social representation of family care for older people with mellitus diabetes. Taking this proposition as a basis, the research problem was thus constructed: What are the social representations of family care for the elderly with mellitus diabetes? The research aimed to determine the social representations about the care provided by family for elderly with mellitus diabetes. For this, we performed an exploratory descriptive study with a qualitative approach, based on the Theory of Social Representations, with 57 seniors registered in the Family Health Strategy Units located in São Luis-MA, covering the period March 2012 to January 2014. To the collect we applied the free association of words technique, followed by a semi structured interview and a socio-demographic questionnaire analyzed by software and content analysis. The evoked words that constituted the core were: company, medical appointments, family, concern, and as a contrasting element: loneliness. For those elements of the second quadrant we find: help, food, attention and care, and in the third quadrant: distance. The evoked words were part of the knowledge acquire in the speeches of the elderly, still observing in their speech, was emphasized the condition of being diabetic. The elderly presented in speech feelings of gratitude, valuation and conformation, enriching the discussion of their research on Social Representations. When seeking the elderly discourse about the family care, the nurse can make an appropriate and quality health planning, providing a strategic care according to the singularities of each family system under his responsibility.