Institutional Accreditation of SUS Ombudspersons: An analysis of the initial external evaluation experiences

Abstract

Based on the Qualification course of External Evaluators for the Accreditation process in the Unified Health System (SUS), held in 2018, this paper aims to discuss the challenges to the training process of these evaluators from a perspective of participatory evaluation to contribute to the improvement of external evaluation and self-evaluation devices. To this end, 33 documents produced with the practice of these devices were analyzed within the project. In external evaluation, the main challenge is to ‘look at the other’. This specific type of perspective requires the External Evaluation Team’s mastery over the previous knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for the work to capture knowledge, intentions, and relationships expressed in the statements of the subjects. In self-evaluation, the main challenge is ‘looking at oneself’. Taking oneself as an object of knowledge and field of transformation requires specific ways of doing to gain quality in work processes. Building a culture of evaluation in which the information produced supports decision-making is a challenge for the ombudspersons, which can be overcome with the Quality Benchmark of the Ombudsperson Services of the SUS.