Ações do aconselhamento para atividade física na atenção primária à saúde: significados e expectativas de profissionais de saúde

Abstract

Within the scope of initiatives aimed at health education and the promotion of healthy lifestyles, physical activity counseling stands out as a fundamental recommendation in Primary Health Care (PHC). Thus, there is a need to investigate how health professionals perceive and express these actions and meanings at this level of care. Therefore, the main objective of the study is to understand the actions of physical activity counseling in Primary Health Care, considering their meanings and the expectations of health professionals who experience this practice. This is a qualitative study with a phenomenological approach, based on Alfred Schutz's phenomenological sociology. The study involved 21 health professionals (physicians, nurses, nursing assistants, and community health agents) from Basic Health Units in the municipality of João Pessoa-PB. The recording of meanings took place between January and February 2025, through semi-structured interviews. The narratives were interpreted through ideographic and nomothetic analyses in light of hermeneutic phenomenology. The research obtained approval from the Research Ethics Committee of the Center for Health Sciences - CCS of the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB).The present study led to the construction of two original articles. The first aimed to understand the meanings of actions attributed by health professionals to physical activity counseling in primary health care. The results indicate that health professionals consider the practice of physical activity counseling important, recommending it widely for disease prevention and with actions involving guidance, listening, visits, and referrals, but some professionals perceive it as a secondary practice in the face of counseling demands. Thus, the meanings attributed to physical activity counseling in health involve the intersubjective experience of health professionals, in which the attributed meanings reveal counseling as an essential practice, yet accompanied by the biomedical model and barriers to its implementation. The second article aimed to reveal the expectations of health professionals regarding the actions of physical activity counseling in PHC. The results of this study showed that health professionals have expectations of: professional qualification regarding the theme of physical activity and the presence of a Physical Education professional. In light of this, it was recognized that ongoing training, as well as technical-pedagogical support and care assistance from the Physical Education professional, can be powerful strategies for consolidating physical activity counseling in PHC.