O conhecimento das mães sobre a caderneta de saúde da criança: sua importância para o acompanhamento da saúde infantil

Object of study: the use of Child Health Record (CHR) by mothers as a tool for surveillance and monitoring of child health. General objective: understand the mothers' knowledge about CHR for her to fulfill its role of monitoring child health. Specific objectives: to describe the knowledge of mothers on CHR and investigate the factors that interfere with the knowledge and her use of the CHR so it can fulfills its role of monitoring the children's health. Study descriptive exploratory with qualitative approach. Scenario: Regional Health Polyclinic member of the Ambulatory Care Network Niteroi Municipal Foundation. Participants: 20 mothers of children aged 0 to 5 years. Data collection: semi-structured interview. By thematic content analysis emerged two thematic units, the first: the Passbook child health in the perception of mothers with three subunits: the knowledge of the Child Health Record; the most used part of the book by mothers and Importance of Child Health Handbook fill. And the second: factors that interfere with the knowledge and use of the CHR by mothers with three subunits: the lack disclosure and difficulty of getting the CHR; filling the CHR by health professionals and the guidance received by the mothers of the health professional. Results: as knowledge of CHR, mothers reported the monitoring of development, weight and height chart markup on breastfeeding guidelines, food and control of vaccines. As part more used by mothers, it was possible to demonstrate the underutilization of the book. On the importance of CHR's fill revealed inform if the daughter is well, if there is a problem, it helps to understand what is going to not catch any disease, never fail to give vaccines. Lack of disclosure and difficulty of getting the book were mentioned as factors that interfere with the knowledge and use of the CHR. As for filling, most reports filling only the weight, graphics and vaccines pages. It also reveals that, they receive little or no guidance on CHR by professionals. Conclusion: the results show the underutilization of CHR by mothers and health professionals. Therefore, it is essential that health professionals use the instrument, performing the notes and making guidelines, so that mothers can understand the importance of CHR and can start to use it well, so it cans fulfill its role of surveillance and monitoring Children's health