The Informal Care of People with Chronic Kidney Disease. A Look from the Perspective of Collective Health and the Theory of Social Representations

The objective of this research was to understand from the collective health and social representations theory the content of the representations and symbolic relationships in a group of primary informal caregivers who care in everyday people with chronic renal failure (CRF). Participated an intentional sample of 21 informal caregivers of people with CRF in the Hemodialysis Unit of the General Hospital of Mexico. We used qualitative methodology with comprehensiveinterpretative approach, which is a oriented mode indepth understanding of social phenomena, such as informal health care. The data collection was through a focused interview and data were analyzed using content analysis assisted with the Atlas program ti.5. This program allowed the development of categories that facilitated the understanding of the data. We defined two types of social representation dimensions: a) Existing, this dimension belongs to the theory of social representations (information, field representation and attitudes about care) and b) Emerging, so called because this dimension emerged at the time of content analysis of the units of analysis (motivation, social support, needs, consequences and care practices). The results allowed to know the contents of social representation and to structure a social representation model of informal care about. It was concluded that embrace subjective of caregivers through social representations to make visible their rol like caregivers. Knowing this through their attitudes arroud of the care, motivations, needs, consecuences and practices care. Which is extremely importan because it makes visible to informal care as social problems in the field of health.

primary informal care, collective health, social representations, chronic kidney failure