Accessibility to the oral health of people with Intellectual Disabilities from the caregiver’s perspective: a qualitative evaluation

Abstract

Objective: to access and identify barriers to oral health care of people with intellectual disabilities (ID), from the caregivers’ perspective. Material and Methods: the random sample was composed of 55 caregivers of people with ID and an interview script with a qualitative approach was applied to deepen the understanding of this group about oral health services accessibility. The qualitative analysis was performed through the Discourse of the Collective Subject Method. Results: we observed some barriers to access and care to oral health to patients with disabilities, such as: lack of structure and organization of the service, deficient training of professionals for attendance, among others. In addition, the health care within a practice little paid in and weakly based on health promotion were other factors that compromised the access of people with ID. Conclusion: the access evaluation is extremely important, because it allows the reordering of actions and services according to the users’ needs. However, despite the advances, the patient with ID still has been facing barriers, basically to the accessibility to treatment performed by professionals, to reception and low management.

Keywords

• acesso aos serviços de saúde
• saúde bucal
• deficiência intelectual