Clarificação dos conceitos de educação em serviço, educação continuada e educação permanente

Abstract

The development of the concept of professional education in health promoted the coexistence of three terms, sometimes used as synonyms, sometimes used as different conceptions. These terms are work education, continuing education and permanent education. The variety of concepts associated to graduation deficiencies makes the educational processes in the health institutions not as effective as they should be. Besides, the existence of innumerable proposals with different methodologies may not correspond to the professional needs to guarantee the quality of work. Thus, it is possible to affirm that there is disagreement among professionals concerning the correct definition of the terms work education, continuing education and permanent education, including the professionals working in the health institutions which intend to use these concepts. Therefore, a question can be made: Is there any kind of agreement about the conceptions of the terms work education, continuing education and permanent education in previous researches? This study aims to explain the concepts of work education, continuing education and permanent education. It was used as a theoretical reference the Meleis proposal in order to clarify the concepts. It includes seven phases, the description of the situation; the description of the phenomenon; the naming; the concept development; the affirmations and proposals development, the explanation of the assumptions and the process of sharing and communicating the concept. The integrative review was used as methodological reference through a bibliographical research in the data base of the Literature in the Health Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean (Literatura Latino- Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (LILACS) and also in The Electronic Library Online (SCIELO). It was used as a descriptor the term continuing education, the only one accepted by the Health Sciences Descriptors (Decs) terminology by BIREME and the terms Work Education and Permanent Education to search in the data base. It was identified a number of 182 publications considering that 20 among them meet the established criteria. Among the chosen publications, 50% were characterized as reflexion studies and the other 50% represented primary studies. In the primary studies it was noticed that four of them are qualitative, four are quali-quantitative and the other two are exploratory-descriptive. It was verified that the term work education represents an educational moment or opportunity which occurs in a work environment, having the local professionals as the target public. The content is contextualized by professional daily routine, since the educational environment is the work. The continuing education refers to the programs which work as a complement to graduation with a content that can be or not be related to the daily work routine. An essential characteristic to be considered is the use of traditional teaching methodologies which value the science as a source of knowledge. The permanent education has as a fundamental characteristic a significant learning conception. It involves a contextualized learning that means thinking and problemize the situations occurred in the work environment. The work and the worker are sources of knowledge. Although common characteristics were identified in this study for each one of the explained concepts, it can be realized that other studies with methodological outline more accurate is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs in the health institutions.