Características necessárias de um profissional de saúde que trabalha com pacientes portadores de necessidades especiais: um contraste de visões de profissionais e alunos de odontologia, pais e cuidadores

Motivation: To know the expectations of odontology professionals, including students, parents and caregivers of Special Needs Patients with respect to characteristics considered to be important of a health professional that deals with Special Needs Patients in his/her practice. Objective: To compare and contrast expectations of this four groups of respondents. Material and Method: Convenience Sample of 245 respondents in the City of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais interviewed by the end of 2002 and beginning of 2003. Opend-ended answers were divided into three meaningful groups of responses: "To Know How to Do" , "To Know How to Be" and "To Be". Analysis was done using the Fisher’s exact test. Conclusions: Odontologists (including students) and Parents and Caregivers have different views about what is needed in order for a health professional to deal with Special Needs Patients. Parents and Caregivers mentioned aspects related to "Know How to Be" (such as ‘love’, ‘patience’, ‘care’) at least once much more often than Odontologists did (including students) (85% versus 55% respectively). This difference was considered statistically significant (p<0.001). Students mentioned this aspect less often compared to all other respondents, which may reflect that the discrepancy between what is learned in the academy and the ‘real world’. We suggest that it also reflects the need to incorporate in the school curriculum aspects that go beyond the simple technical knowledge, including a broder humanistic education.