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Revista Chilena de Fonoaudiología accepts manuscripts on an ongoing basis throughout the calendar year. The journal operates under a "continuous publication" model.

Speech Therapy practice in Primary Health Care in Chile from users, speech pathologists and other health professionals’ perspectives from Santiago

Authors

Abstract

The health system in Chile is based on the Comprehensive Care Model with a family and community approach, whose structural and articulating core is primary care. Insertion of speech and language professionals at this level is incipient and studies on the subject are scarce. This research sought to describe the practices and experiences of speech therapy in Primary Health Care (PHC) from the perspective of users, speech therapists and other professionals in the health area, who belonged to the city of Santiago during the year 2017. Thus, a qualitative exploratory study was carried out, based on the hermeneutic-interpretive paradigm, in which three focus groups were carried out and the information was analyzed through content analysis. The most relevant categories that emerged from the analysis show that the three groups agree with the growing need for speech therapy in PHC to respond to situations associated with human communication and oral feeding. Also, the three groups agree that this need is linked with a diversification of the professional actions of the speech therapists who work in PHC, in addition to the need for training in the family and community health model. Therefore, it is concluded that the conceptual-theoretical framework on which the professionals are based should be reconfigured and training should be reoriented towards PHC.

Keywords:

Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Primary Health Care, Public Health, Chile