Abstract:

Communication represents an essential tool for nursing care; however, scientific evidence show lacks in nurses' knowledge of this theme, especially regarding visits to the blind patient.Hence, information and communication technologies represent an innovative teaching-learning option to promote acquisition of this knowledge and to ensure accessibility of visually impaired subjects in health services.Through financial support of the Researchers Program to the Brazilian Unified Health System, the “Communication between Nurse and Blind Patients” course was created to capacitate health professionals in such theme.We aimed at evaluating the acquisition of knowledge regarding communication with blind subjects, upon the use of a distance education technology for Health Primary Care nurses.This is a qualitative, evaluative and exploratory research of intentional and non-probabilistic sample including Family Health Strategy nurses from Triangulo CRAJUBAR – CE.Data collection occurred between August and November 2015 by means of questionnaires that were analyzed using the software Alceste 4.10 and the Theory of Social Representations. After the educational program, there was a significant apprehension of elements, functions and kinds of communications and their importance for nursing.The results show that the perceptions and concepts of the group regarding such theme were limited before the course, with clear confusion of types of communication and their use in the nursing visit to a blind person.We have noticed the predominance of verbal communication through speech and writing, omission or lack of knowledge of nonverbal communication.Braille was mentioned wrongly in the speeches as a non-verbal communication, which demonstrates a significant limitation in the domain of such language in the group. By investigating the importance of communication skills for nursing visits to a blind person, the speeches were restricted to the patient/professional interaction, to the emotional support and to data collection for nursing history.These elements, which were obtained before the educational program, reinforce the importance of guiding nurses and nursing academics as to the techniques and types of communication for the disabled person.Although the need of nurses' professional update is evident, we noticed low adhesion to the proposed course, which reinforces the urgency of a sensitivity and mobilization movement of these professionals for the qualification of such care in the Brazilian Unified Health System, especially regarding the disabled person.The impacts of capacitation in the study group show its importance to the promotion of communication and implantation accessibility of the care service to the disabled subject.After the distance education, nurses developed representations and concepts on the elements and functions of verbal communication and apprehended the characteristics and types of non-verbal communication, which was mentioned before the course imprudently.We have also seen that the group apprehended the six verbal communication elements and described them in the communicational process.The educational program efficacy was seen for the apprehension of knowledge regarding communication with the blind patient at short term, which represents the opportunity for extensive formation of nurses in the theme and for the assurance of communication accessibility for such population.

Keywords:

Nursing, Disabled Persons, Education, Distance.