Professional actions of social assistants in primary healthcare in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article systematizes the actions of social assistants associated to a multi-professional residency course in family health,  undertaken within the Primary Healthcare System, during the new coronavirus pandemic, in a context of reorganization of healthcare services and the labor of professionals in the sector. Its objective is to contribute to reflections about the technical-operative dimension of the profession, addressing aspects of work by the Expanded Family Healthcare Nucleus in this exceptional period. The systematization was conducted through registers in field diaries prepared by the professionals from March to September 2020. The main results indicate that the sanitary crisis deepened social inequalities, requiring predominantly educational professional actions aimed at the population’s access to social rights and services that support better living conditions, considering changes provoked by the pandemic. The reorganization required in the collective work process in healthcare services involved alterations in the flows of access to social services and rights. This means that, in the period analyzed, there was a predominance of professional demands related to administration and planning, that involved the elaboration of informative materials to support educational actions, the promotion of pertinent information to the population that uses Brazil’s federal public single healthcare system, and providing instructions to multi-professional teams about social benefits available to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. The socio-educational actions aimed at mobilization and political-organizational assistance were essential to realizing access to collective practices of social control focused on the universal right to healthcare.