Conhecimento dos profissionais de saúde e graduandos de enfermagem sobre hanseníase

Abstract

Leprosy is an infectious and chronic degenerative disease whose lesions affect the skin and peripheral nerves. Objectives: To evaluate the theoretical knowledge of health-care professionals and undergraduate Nursing students about the general aspects of leprosy, the diagnosis, the transmission and the treatment of the disease. To compare the questions regarding the health-care professionals 'and undergraduates' correct answers. Method: Descriptive and cross-sectional study; data collection was performed with 602 people: 456 (75.7%) health-care professionals and 146 (24.3%) Nursing students. Results: According to the general aspects of Leprosy, health-care professionals had better scores than students, but with a lower percentage than expected (70%); the issues related to the diagnosis of Leprosy, it was observed that those containing popular information about the disease and which appeared in the media as “spots that do not hurt”, “cut without feeling”, “whitish spots” were the most pointed out by both categories. Regarding the issues related to the transmission of Leprosy, obtained a greater number of correct answers on household contacts: professionals, 383 (83.99%) and students, 93 (63.70%). Issues related to the treatment of Leprosy showed a greater number of correct answers in the question about prevention actions: 353 (77.41%) professionals and 66 (45.21%) graduating students. All comparisons showed statistical significance with P <0.05. Conclusion: We concluded from this study that health-care professionals answered more questions about Leprosy than health graduates, this was already expected due to their time of experience and training, but even more corrected answers, the overall average of correct answers only reached the expected goal of 70% in the diagnosis of Leprosy. Among the difficulties found according to the professionals' answers were to think that health service users who have Leprosy should receive a differentiated care from other users. Graduates did not reach the target of 70% correctness in any of the themes about Leprosy, but they got the questions right that referred to the most popular information and that appear in the media, such as the presence of whitish or reddish spots on the skin. The impact that this study can show us is that it is necessary to invest in health education, training on the theme of Leprosy, for the community, health undergraduates as well as for health-care professionals, who we expected to be much more successful in relation to the theme, since in Brazil, Leprosy only loses in number of cases as compared to India, which is still a neglected disease, that there is still prejudice, and few studies and updated investments about the disease are found in the Literature. Thus, it is suggested the spread of knowledge about Leprosy, therefore, the customer care with leprosy is not prejudiced and that it can present quality, humanization and respect, reducing the magnitude of the disease.