Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Introduction: Chronic respiratory diseases are among the main public health problems in the world. Despite being sensitive to treatment in Primary Health Care, they are the third leading cause of deaths in Brazil. Telemedicine services present themselves as important allies of health professionals regarding the management of respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Objective: to evaluate the adequacy of a telemedicine diagnostic service in spirometry considering the indicators of supply, use and population coverage in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.  Results: In the studied period, the service offered 27,672 telespirometry tests to users of the Brazilian Unified Health System referred by Primary Health Care physicians; the use was under 50% in relation to the offer in all health macro-regions of the state. Conclusions: The study demonstrated that the capacity installed by the service was adequate to meet the demand of the population in Rio Grande do Sul. However, the low usage of the service may be associated with lack of knowledge about the service and the difficulty to recognize these diseases by health professionals in Primary Health Care.

Despite being written nearly a hundred years ago, A Country Doctor’s Notebook, by Mikhail Bulgakov, remains an exceptionally well-crafted reflection on medical practice in narrative form. By blending Bulgakov’s own experience as the only doctor in a rural area and his literary mastery, he is able to bring out the universal experience of being an inexperienced doctor. For practitioners in developing countries or remote areas, such as the author, even more parallels can be drawn. Themes such as impostor syndrome, bias, failures, personal responsibility, and others are addressed.

Kathryn Mannix's book entitled “We Need to Talk About Death” is both personally and professionally transformative. The author approaches, through experiences with her patients at the end of life, the patterns and the unique way each individual experiences finitude; in addition, she discusses the importance of talking about immortality and the human capacity to give new meaning to painful moments, the legacy of each individual and the concern with transcendence. It is not a book about dying, but about how to live from the perspective that we are not immortal.

Introduction: The rough-sleeping population is vulnerable due many factors determining or conditioning their health and contribute to the raising the index of clinical comorbidities, as mental health, chronic and infectious diseases. The marginalization of the homeless population leads to a gap on the health care that sometimes is supplied by non-profit organizations, which play a fundamental social role. Objective: To map the clinical profile of the homeless population of Curitiba (PR) attended by a voluntary initiative in the period of a year. Methods: It’s an observational study based on the medical records of the 509 patients older than 18 year that had their first health-care attendance provided by the World Doctors Association, branch Curitiba (PR), in the year of 2019. Results: The predominant sociodemographic conditions were white males, aged between 36 and 45 years old, that have attended elementary school and were homeless for less than a year. The main complains that lead to health care search were pain (45,19%), dermatologic lesions (15,71%) and ophthalmologic complains (6,68%). Most of the patients exhibited chronic systemic arterial hypertension (9,03%), HIV/AIDS (3,53%) and diabetes mellitus (3,53%). There were also identified a great amount of past reported physical trauma (59%). The research found a statistical correlation between hypertension and chronic use of medications (p=0,001). Less than 10% of the rough-sleeping attended population sought medical care due mental health complains. Of the female studied population, 70% reported substance use and, approximately half of them, the regular use of chronic use medicines. Even though, contraceptives were only reported by a minority of this population (18,57%). Conclusions: Pain, dermatologic and ophthalmological complains were the main medical care seeking reason by the rough-sleeping population, besides the prevalence of systemic arterial hypertension as a chronic illness. These findings can subside and direct healthcare actions oriented to this marginalized population.

Introduction: Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes mellitus with a major impact on health, but its diagnosis through ophthalmoscopy and early treatment have been shown to reduce progression to visual loss. In the area assigned by the primary health care center where the present study was carried out, the medical team noticed a significant number of people who did not have a fundus examination periodically. Objective: To assess the rate of people adequately screened for retinopathy among those with type 2 diabetes in this rural location. Method: This study was an experience report of conducting a clinical audit to assess the rate of retinopathy screening among type 2 diabetics in a primary health care center. For this purpose, a spreadsheet with diabetic patients was generated electronically by the e-SUS record with subsequent reading of the record of the last two years in search of mentioning the performance of ophthalmoscopy. Results: The report generated 3736 active registrations, of which 181 were diabetic, of which, 156 were selected for analysis because they were proven to be type 2 diabetics. The screening rate in the last two years was 13.4%. In 61.9% of the cases, fundoscopy was performed at the primary health care center itself. Conclusion: The clinical audit was a useful tool in confirming and delimiting the suspicion of a low rate of screening for diabetic retinopathy. The accomplishment of fundoscopy by the trained family and community doctor was a strategy that allowed an increase in this percentage.

Introduction: Telehealth is key to primary health care qualification. There is no knowledge about its use in the Mais Médicos Program. Here, we sought to analyze the use of Telehealth tools at Mais Médicos in Espírito Santo State, Brazil, in 2016. Objective: To analyze the use of Telehealth tools at Mais Médicos in Espírito Santo State, Brazil, in 2016. Method: This was a cross-sectional study with a structured questionnaire administered to all physicians present at regional telehealth seminars. The analysis included absolute and relative frequency and bivariate analysis with Fisher's exact test. Results: A total of 211 doctors (48.6% of the professionals at Mais Médicos) participated. The majority were Cubans who worked in a large urban center with a specialization in Family and Community Medicine. Most (n=130, 61.9%) had already used some Telehealth service, but discontinuously, with Teleeducation being the most used (n=101; 77.7%). Getting to know Telehealth and its tools and seeing them as relevant to improving the service were associated with greater use of technologies. The facility and type of device used to access the internet did not influence the use of the program. Conclusion: It is concluded that the knowledge and importance given to Telehealth tools by professionals and their work context are more associated with their use than structural working conditions.

Introduction: Pedagogical training programs represent important qualification strategies for physicians who work or wish to work as preceptors and/or teachers. In this sense, the Specialization Course in Preceptorship in Family Medicine at Universidade Aberta do Sistema Único de Saúde/Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre (UNA-SUS/UFCSPA) emerges, with the aim of promoting the training of preceptors for the specialty, even during medical residency. Objective: To analyze the demographic profile of the Preceptorship Specialization Course participants, as well as their performance, perceptions, benefits, and difficulties during the course activities. Methods: A descriptive, observational, and quantitative study, conducted in 2 phases: Population Mapping (Phase 1), carried out from a survey of registration data with the Academic Department of UNA-SUS/UFCPA; and Structured Questionnaire (Phase 2), carried out through the application of a questionnaire on a digital platform. The research included variables such as course class, academic status, gender, age, state, and city of origin of the participants, in addition to perceptions, benefits, and difficulties during the course. The perceptions about the course were analyzed using an adapted version of the Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey (Colles) tool. Results: In the Population Mapping Phase, 2,530 students and alumni were identified in the three editions of the Specialization Course in Preceptorship, with a predominance of female participants (65.4%) and from the Southeast region (48.9%). The Structured Questionnaire Phase consisted of 232 participants, representing 9.17% of the total number of students and graduates of the Course. Regarding the benefits of specialization, a significant majority of participants highlighted the “Opportunity for training in medical education/preceptorship” (95.2%) and the “Financial incentive from the Ministry of Health” (91.3%). On the other hand, regarding the difficulties, the “Schedules and deadlines for delivery of activities” (33.1%), and “Difficulties with feedback from tutors and pedagogical support” (21.9%) emerge as important obstacles for the activities of the course. Conclusions: The Specialization Course in Preceptorship proved to be an ambitious and remarkable initiative, reaching thousands of resident physicians in the specialty in different parts of the country. Although some of its strategies and tools need to be improved, the general perception of students and graduates was positive.

Introduction: Pectus carinatum (PC) is an unusual deformity of the chest wall that usually arises in childhood and becomes more pronounced in adolescence. This malformation can lead to aesthetic and self-esteem disorders, in addition to respiratory problems, due to the restriction of the chest wall. There are few Brazilian studies dedicated exclusively to PC, and most are directed at pectus excavatum or the investigation of both conditions jointly. Presentation of the case: In this case, a 13-year-old male sought medical attention in primary health care (PHC) because of the appearance of tumefaction in the parasternal region. He denied physical symptoms but reported embarrassment and aesthetic discomfort with the presence of the prominence. Conclusions: The multidisciplinary approach of thoracic deformity is fundamental in acceptance and treatment, with PHC playing an essential role, since all the team must assist and provide, through treatment, a better aesthetic, physical and emotional quality of life to the patient, and these factors led us to document this case.

The strengthening of Family and Community Medicine and Primary Health Care in Latin America requires, among many other things, the production of scientific journals with high social and academic impact. The Brazilian Journal of Family and Community Medicine has the potential to be one of these journals. However, the task of managing and increasing the social and academic relevance of small journals, with modest metrics and/or linked to emerging research areas, as in the case of Brazilian Journal of Family and Community Medicine, is complex. Over the years, we have observed a significant increase in the scientific impact of this journal, such as the increase in its H5 Index (Google). However, there is still a lot of work ahead to achieve indexing in MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science. This editorial is a way of mobilizing the entire academic and care communities in Family and Community Medicine and Primary Health Care to join efforts to strengthen the journal.

The medical interview consists of organizing the patient’s information in a medical algorithm to enable decisions and organize the record. Leisure is fundamental information to understand the subject’s context. The relationship between culture and leisure creates the need to realize that, depending on the place and time, there will be some prescribed and prohibited leisure activities. To maintain an active and quality life, it is necessary that the patient sometimes needs the prescription or proscription of leisure. This leisure is much broader than physical activities. How can this happen and what should be sought to better understand this? What is leisure and what are its forms of prescription?