7.N. Skills building seminar: Mental health Care Access Game: training health professionals to decrease health care inequalities
Authors:   Organised by: Diretoria de Atenção Primária e Redes Assistenciais, Hospital Albert Einstein (Brazil),   Chair persons: Isadora Siqueira De Souza (Brazil)
Published: October 2023

Overcoming health inequalities is a global challenge, especially in mental health care, and requires intersectoral strategies to be delivered in different formats. In Brazil, as well as other world settings, the Primary health care (PHC) takes a strategic role to organize and integrate public health services, representing a key component to guarantee universal and equitable access to health system actions and services. Although the relevant and increasing global burden of mental health disorders, stigma and concentration of mental health care at specialized services contribute to a huge gap in mental health care. Thus, considering PHC geographic closeness and bond with community and families’ context of life, it is a key component to mental health care access. Continuous improvement of public health services work process is one of the strategies adopted to overcome inequalities. At this context, the Health Care Planning (HCP) is a methodology used nationwide in Brazil aiming to organize healthcare networks and health services work processes, with a focus on adding value to the care offered. The HCP method is used by the mental health care in PHC project (SMAPS, from Portuguese), which is developed in three Brazilian states supporting the mental health care in PHC. At one of SMAPS steps, the thematic of access to the psychosocial care network by PHC is discussed and at this context, the ‘Access Game’ was developed and used as educational technology. It is noteworthy that this game has already been performed in 130 PHC services in Brazil, with the participation of 2190 health professionals. The present workshop aims to present a proposal of workshop developed by SMAPS, based on gamification, to qualify access and integrality of care for people who need of mental health care. It focuses on knowledge transferring throughout participants engagement at two playful activities. Activity 1) Access Game: it was designed to be replicated at different cultural and geographic context, from settings with higher vulnerability and low resources to high technology settings. The game presents and enable discussing the histories of five characters who represent people that look for mental health care at PHC. The game presents and enable discussing the histories of five characters who represent people that seek access to mental health care in PHC. Participants play in a board game and may come across illustrations that help trigger discussions about barriers to access mental health care, as well as PHC strengths that contribute to overcome barriers and ensure integrality of care. Figures that illustrate PHC potentialities and strategies make the player move some spaces forward, while those that represent the barriers of access to the PHC service make the player go back some spaces. Activity 2) Visible thinking routine: participants will complete the following sentence about “Access to mental health care”: “I used to think..., Now I think...”.

Key messages

• The Access Game can be used to qualify access and integrality of care of people with mental health care needs. This game was designed to be replicated in different cultural and geographical contexts.

• The use of games in adults teaching enable students to reflect on their practices and thus contributing to teamwork and health care practices improvement.