A adesão ao exercício físico em itinerários terapêuticos de idosos com patologias crônicas

Abstract

Conceptions of health and disease has become an important issue in discussions in several areas, the relationship between culture and health is clearly perceptible when we understand the process of choosing the therapeutic itinerary of elderly people with chronic diseases because it is directly linked to the socio cultural context to which it is inserted. Currently, exercise has increasingly been part of the therapeutic itinerary of this population in addition to treatment, but often the barriers that the elderly to start in a physical activity prevents from continuing with this active lifestyle that would provide a better quality of life. From this perspective, we formulate the following research question: what are the difficulties encountered in the starting process to physical exercise as part of treatment of chronic diseases in the elderly people? The objectives were: understand the therapeutic itinerary of elderly people with chronic diseases; examine how the physical exercise is introduced in to treatment; describe and analyze the difficulties encountered in the starting process to physical exercise; and observe in the reports what the importance given to the physical exercise as part of treatment. This is a descriptive study with qualitative approach and a quantitative insertion. It was interviewed six selected elderly non-probabilistic way for convenience, the interview was recorded, transcribed and then triangulated. The analytical processes and the manner of presentation of the narratives were performed through qualitative content analysis that followed the steps 1) pre-analysis, 2) exploration of the material and 3) treatment of results, inference and interpretation. At the end of this research, the initial hypothesis can be confirmed, that is, the most prevalent difficulties in the starting process of physical activities originate from psychological factors. We checked the ways of overcoming it is clear that this is driven by one motive, the acquired benefits. However, we remember that many elderly people cannot overcome these difficulties abandoning the exercise, in some cases alternative activities could be prescribed based on the chronic pathology presented and negative determinants which resulted in the withdrawal of the initial activity.