Educação em saúde bucal na perspectiva da promoção da saúde

Abstract

Educative practices guided by the paradigm of Health Promotion have as a purpose the construction of knowledge given people’s autonomy so that they can develop healthy habits as self-care conducts. In this perspective, educative practices of oral health promotion aim at empowering individuals to act, as protagonists, in front of the multi-causal factors that involve the oral health-disease process. In this sense, in contrast model of the traditional model of health education, in which predominates the knowledge transmission, frequently masked as normative instructions focused on disease prevention, culminating in passive subjects in the process of learning. To contribute with educative practices in oral health compromised with knowledge building – especially from the school community of federal institutes – this research had as general objective identifying the orientation of educational practices in oral health in a sample of this institutional network, especially regarding the main demands in the dental sector and, based on these results, to elaborate and apply a pilot educational activity in oral health identified with the central principles of Health Promotion. Methodologically, the research was structured in two stages: the first one corresponded to the lifting of the actions of a sample of the dentists from the federal institutes' network, focusing on the educative practices in oral health, which were, posteriorly, qualified and categorized according to the appointed theoretical content. The sample universe of this stage was compound by 42 dentists from 12 campuses of the federal institutes, distributed in the five regions of the country. As a research instrument, a questionnaire was used, composed of objective and discursive questions, whose results were submitted to quantitative and qualitative analysis. The second stage of the research consisted of the development of experimental activity in oral health, in which it sought to verify the degree of awareness provoked in its participants, given the participatory learning process of beneficial and sustainable measures for oral health. This activity – which has as background the significant learning – counted on theoretical intersectoral approaches and laboratory practice of a theme of common interest. Thereunto, the evaluative matrix of this stage counted on 21 students of the Ifes campus Santa Teresa high school; among which 13 were submitted to clinical-dental measurements – through the Simplified Oral Hygiene Index (OHI-S) – before and after the educational activity and responded to a semi-structured questionnaire at the end, by way of their evaluation in terms of efficiency and acceptability, respectively. The results were analyzed from a quantitative and qualitative approach. Concerning the research results, it was verified that the educational practices in oral health developed by the sample of the researched dentists are, mostly, identified with the hegemonic model of education. Regarding the pilot educational activity, this proved to be effective under the point of view of its proposal, whereas through the obtained numbers, it was found expressive awareness of the participants, resulting in conducts identified with the concept of Health Promotion.