Primary health care: Nurses’ meanings in a Colombian municipality

Introduction: Primary health care is a strategy that involves the different health professionals and other agents in the system who can influence the social determinants that affect human wellbeing. Objective: To know the meanings about primary health care of nursing professionals practicing in this field in a municipality of Colombia. Materials and Methods: Qualitative, exploratory, descriptive study. The research was conducted in a State Social Company (ESE for its acronym in Spanish) that provides primary health care services. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The sample consisted of 13 professionals. IRaMuTeQ software was used to help data interpretation. Results: ‘Nurse’ was the most frequent word. The content analyzed was categorized into four classes:‘Meanings about primary health care’, ‘nursing activities in primary health care’, ‘barriers encountered in primary health care’, ‘primary health care organization and work team’. Conclusions: Primary health care meaning is understood as the entry point of users into the health system and the one responsible for coordinating their passage through other points of the healthcare network according to users’ health needs. In addition, primary health care is understood as the level of care at which essential health actions focused on the early detection of health risks and complications are carried out, so that health interventions can be planned, implemented, and evaluated on that basis.