Academic development in occupational therapy and its concepts about health‑sickness process

Abstract

Introduction: Before a biologic and organicist culture, conceptions about health and illness discussed in the superior education are still influenced by the symptomatic and medicating logic. Objective: Considering this context, the objectives of this study are aimed at analyzing such conceptions in a teaching‑learning experience of the occupational therapy course in the Faculdade de Medicina do ABC in Santo André city. Methods: As a central methodologic principle, we have opted by the experience acquired by the student, focusing him/her as the active subject of reflections/narratives before the supervised practice. Narratives have been collected from individual field diaries and categorized into thematic units. Results: It has been principally perceived that the health‑illness process was understood as being polar, with one of them in opposition to the other one. While health is the expression of complete wellbeing/equilibrium, illness means the lack of it. Few students have taken into consideration the category of social necessities in health terms in determining the health‑illness process in childhood. Conclusion: We have concluded that this experience provided the students with the understanding that to face the childhood health necessities in Capuava, it is necessary that health and illness be primarily analyzed as processes experienced, felt, and contextualized with its own history, culture and subjectivity, and interrelated with social determinants/necessities presented by the children, their families, and the environment.