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Experiences of speech therapist in hospitals and Community Rehabilitation Centers: Is the care practice changed?

Authors

Abstract

The present work seeks to characterize speech therapy practices in two Chilean public health care contexts (hospital and primary care - community rehabilitation centers). It is a qualitative study with a micro-sociological approach, which involved conducting in-depth interviews and non-participant observations with two speech therapists inserted in Community Rehabilitation Centers (CCR) and two speech therapists enrolled in public hospitals. The data obtained were analyzed with Grounded Theory tools and a conceptualization based on similarities and differences of speech therapy practices was proposed using ATLAS-ti computational software. The following categories emerge from the analysis: role of the professional, subject of care, therapist-user relationship, physical space and organization of the session, the participants. In addition, the main finding refers to the fact that all the professionals mention the relevance of incorporating psychosocial nuances in the approach they carry out. However, in the practice of all speech therapists during participant observation, such incorporation is not evidenced. The results allow us to conclude that the conceptualization of speech therapy is built mostly from the work context. Likewise, the models of care at the base (biomedical-biopsychosocial) are currently in a process of hybridization, the practice of speech therapists being situated and also influenced by the work context.

Keywords:

Speech Therapy, Rehabilitation, Public hospitals, Primary health care, Scope of Practice