<b>Perceptions of the nurses from family health units on the health-illness process</b> - DOI: 10.4025/cienccuidsaude.v8i2.8201

Abstract

Family Health is one of the strategies taken over by the Health Department with the purpose of reorganizing the Basic Health Services. The nurses, as members of the , need a more comprehensive knowledge on the health-illness process and its causes, in order to take care of the multiple requirements of the work and to give quality assistance to the families. This work had the purpose to identify through the perception of the nurses of Family Health Units, the process health-illness. This investigation had a exploratory character and the participants in this study were four nurses. Data was collected by means of half-structuralized interviews and the analysis of the material was performed grouping in two main themes: "unveiling the concept of health in the perception of nurses" and "apprehending the nurses’ concept of disease". The nurses showed knowledge on the extended concept of health, and illness was characterized as the opposite of health, exposed by signals and symptoms. The distance between theory and practical was told to be a problem to be faced. In this direction, strategies are needed in order to discuss the process health-illness and to intervene in the necessities of public health.