PERCEPTION OF PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIANS IN CAMPINA GRANDE – PB ABOUT FILLING OUT THE DEATH CERTIFICATE

Abstract

The death certificate (DC) is an official document of an ethical, legal and epidemiological nature, nationally standardized and feeds the Mortality Information System (SIM) of the Ministry of Health (MS). Primary care professionals are classified in this context as assistant physicians and must be prepared to properly fill out the DCs. Failures in filling out the death certificate or even a misunderstanding of the data to be reported in this document highlight a serious problem: the academic limitation of medical courses in training professionals minimally capable of filling out that document. The objective of this study is to understand whether the primary care medical professional in the city of Campina Grande has the minimum competencies to fill out the death certificate. Questionnaires with 14 sociodemographic questions and 16 cognitive questions were applied, prepared in accordance with the Manual of Instructions for Filling Out the Death Certificate of the Ministry of Health. A total of 46 primary care physicians from Campina Grande – PB participated in the research. The overall performance of the physicians showed a good average of correct answers (69.55%), those who had between 1 and 5 years of graduation had better performance (71.09%). However, for knowledge considered indispensable, the performance was around 48.3%. The fact that Primary Health Care (PHC) physicians also work in other services, such as urgent and emergency services, was not shown to be a facilitating factor for filling out the DC.