Social representations of emergency professionals on prevention of hospital readmissions trough suicide attempt

Abstract The research that originated this article aimed to analyze social representations of emergency professionals about the prevention of recurrences due to suicide attempt. It was a research based on the theory of social representations in the procedural approach, with thirty emergency workers from a public hospital in Bahia, Brazil, carried out in 2017. The question was based on the understanding of these professionals about the prevention of recurrence of suicide attempt, and the analysis was performed using the cognitive network analysis model. The semantic network was composed of 260 vertices and 431 edges with an average degree equal to 2.61. The main terms that radiated meaning to the discourse of the social group were ‘monitoring’, ‘psychologist’ and ‘patient’, demonstrating a perception of prevention for recurrences by suicide attempts in a positively complex and multidisciplinary way. Participants understand that the phenomenon has particularities that require both in-hospital transformations – by encouraging demystification and combating prejudice of patients at risk of dying from suicide, restructuring of management, screening and monitoring during the stay of hospitalization – as well as extra-hospital, evoking the work between the different levels of care and support networks, in addition to dynamism and comprehensive care as a resource to prevent recurrences of these patients.