OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE: BUILDING A PRACTICE

The courses of Occupational Therapy in Brazil they are undergoing strong transformations with the curriculum changes that have been developed in recent years. new demands e areas of action arise from specific contexts where the courses are inserted, but there are also professional demands for the adequacy of health education to the care model proposed by the Unified Health System (SUS). 

This article presents a curricular internship experience from the perspective of Primary Health Care, fruit of the need for a comprehensive and adequate training for the student. The internship field arises from the teaching, research and extension experiences started in 2005 and is developed in a neighborhood in the city of Salvador, Bahia.

This practice is aimed at people with disabilities, identified in an initial survey, but is not restricted to them. Thus, at first, students identify people with disabilities within a micro-area, assess their living and health conditions and plan actions that range from the household to the neighborhood. Secondly, the actions are territorially based and presuppose the creation of therapeutic and health education groups, art and income generation workshops, discussion forums on disability, participation in events in the neighborhood and in the city, related or not to the situation of people with disabilities, in order to take the discussion about disability to other spaces for negotiation and decision-making.

This experience has been important for students, supervisors and service technicians when it comes to building a practice of care for people with disabilities, outside the walls of traditional rehabilitation institutions, consistent with the limitations and possibilities of a given location.