Abstract

SANTOS, Ítalo Emanuel Rolemberg dos; VARGAS, Marlizete Maldonado  and  REIS, Francisco Prado. Labor stressors in community health agents. Rev. Psicol., Organ. Trab. [online]. 2014, vol.14, n.3, pp. 324-335. ISSN 1984-6657.

The Community Health Agents (ACS) as facilitators of people's access to health services and ombudsmen of user's complaint concerning basic attention. In this sense, the study aims to verify the occurrence of occupational stress in ACSs from Aracaju, SE; identify the stress phase found in the ACSs; identify the prevalence of physical or psychological symptoms in these people; characterize the work stress and its possible interferences in the activities performed by the ACSs. The data were collected through the Inventory of Symptoms of Stress for Adults of Lipp (ISSL) and a questionnaire to identify stress factors in the activity, submitted to 236 individuals. It was found that 61.4% of them had some manifestation of stress, 51.7% of ACS was in the resistance phase, predominantly physical symptoms (52.4%). It was also found that only three basic health units (UBS) had a percentage of subjects in the exhaustion phase, corresponding to 0.4% of the sample. In other three health units the relative frequency "no stress manifestations" surpassed the percentage of those who were in some stage of stress. As the main source of stress it was appointed the working relationship with management, and it was considered very stressful working with managers whose leadership is: authoritarian, without autonomy, demotivating, stressed and / or unprepared for the role. The relationship with other ACSs and users was not considered stressful though. At the end of the study, it was noticed that even the body having resources to adapt to not prolonged stressful situations, most aspects considered stressors was related to management issues.

Keywords : Community health agents; worker's health; stress.

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