COMPREHENSIVE GERIATRIC ASSESSMENT ADAPTED HEALTH STRATEGY FAMILY: OPTIMIZING THE TIME, EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF EACH PROFESSIONAL TEAM.

The increasing proportion of elderly in Brazil follows a global trend. Thus the demand for treatment in this group, in primary care and also in the Family Health Strategy (FHS) is also increasing. The Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) is a recognized instrument able to make an effective screening of important conditions that affect the elderly, allowing an effective care plan. However, this instrument requires a lot of professional time to be realized. The ESF nuclear team consists in four different categories of professionals: doctors, nurses, nursing auxiliary and community health agent. After a specific training, exploring the potential of the professionals, CGA was divided into four steps, in which the elderly was evaluated by each professional in a rotative circuit. Thus, the professional spent no more than 20 minutes with each elderly (the longest time of an step). Comparing results, our evaluation was about three times faster than the evaluation made by a single professional. As a result, the evaluation becomes faster; explores the potential of each professional category; the elderly feel more welcome because they realize the team’s involvement; the professionals feel valued, the care plans were more comprehensive, and the team was strengthened by doing a job together.