Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The article includes theoretical and epistemological reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in professional training in health based on the mentoring experience in the technical training of community health workers. Several curricular arrangements have placed the difficulties of the association between the theory/practice and school/work world dichotomies on their agendas. A few of these arrangements proposed for training the community health agent, such as the way the concentration/dispersion mode has been configuring itself, have preserved or even strengthened the logic of training for the mere mechanical reproduction of the procedures learned over experience at work. Other arrangements, among which mentoring and professional practices, suggest it is possible to build a more organic relationship between the classroom and the labor universe. Thus, the relationship between polytechnic skills, mentoring, and professional practices is presented as a proposition to face the challenges of building the historical praxis of these workers.

The political-pedagogical project emerges as a dynamic instrument of the changes that are desired and necessary to the training of health professionals, together with the organization of the health system and aiming at comprehensive care and at overcoming the fragmentation that is characteristic of the biomedical paradigm. This study aimed to analyze the training provided in a course on nutrition based on the students' representations about the strengths and weaknesses of the political-pedagogical project being instituted, in dialog with the one already instituted. There were focus groups with 46 students. The data collected were treated by means of content analysis, and the interpretation was subsidized by the political-pedagogical project that had already been constituted for the course. The professors' training and performance, the coordinating disciplines, the course completion project methodology, early contact with the practice, and the conducting of educational seminars emerged as the potentialities of the training process. The small number of professors trained in nutrition in the early stages of the course and the lack of contextualization of a few of the subjects were seen as weaknesses. Based on the strengths and weaknesses pointed out, it was concluded that significant progress has been made towards the desired profile for the graduates. Pursuing a teacher training process that can produce a new qualitative leap to draw the instituted and instituting closer together remains a challenge.

The purpose of this article was to discuss the interrelations between the reports from the National Health Conferences and the proposals submitted in official Unified Health System documents regarding human resource training and development, seeking to relate them to the incorporation of new pedagogical frameworks guided by active teaching-learning methods. The study presented here was exploratory, referring to research done on the literature in the areas of health and education for the period ranging from 1941 – when the 1st National Health Conference was held – to 2007, when decree No. 1996 GM/MS. This decree was enacted setting new guidelines and strategies for the implementation of the National Policy of Continuing Education in Health, in order to highlight the importance of training human resources to consolidate the Unified Health System. It was found that there is a correlation between the claims emerging from the social needs identified in the construction of the Unified Health System and the proposals contained in the relevant legislation. It is worthy of note that the success of continuing education projects depends on the deep intertwining between educational processes and ins-titutional intervention that address the complexity of the ways of doing health.

Based on qualitative research and on the perspective of gender theory, this study aims to identify and analyze the views health professionals working in a multidisciplinary team in oncology have of the care provided to male cancer patients. Ten health professionals that make up a multidisciplinary team at a cancer hospital in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, were interviewed. The results indicate that, to the respondents, men are a resistant, hard-to-work-with audience, requiring a different type of management than that provided to women. The biological dimension and the socialization process were singled out as factors that contribute to this gap. It was further observed that the health professionals’ discourses are also crossed by gender stereotypes. Greater emphasis was placed on women's needs and on the non-recognition of men as subjects of health and welfare action policies. It is necessary to include the masculinity topic in the oncology health service discussion agenda, favoring a participatory construction of strategies that enable the recognition of men's needs and ensure health practices guided by the principle of comprehensiveness.

In this essay, we discuss health as an objective process, constituted of (and in) the universality of the social being. We dialoged with authors of Latin American social medicine and public health, because they pioneered this debate based on the Marxist theoretical framework. We seek to contribute to bringing the ‘ontology’ of Lukács as a theoretical framework, which is still little used in the health field. We note that the ontological approach contributes to a more accurate understanding of health as a social process and praxis (in a counter-hegemonic perspective), paving the way for understanding the current challenges of the field, as well as to have a glimpse its limits and possibilities.

The low levels of compliance with drug therapy is a serious obstacle to the successful control of diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. This article addresses a study that was based on the identification of illiteracy as a major cause of non-compliance with a drug treatment among diabetic and hypertensive patients participating in the Hiperdia program at a health unit in the city of Colombo, state of Paraná, Brazil. The goal was to assess the impact of pictorial prescriptions on compliance with treatment. A group of 63 diabetic and hypertensive patients participating in Hiperdia was analyzed. They answered a structured interview, the content of which was subsequently analyzed before and after the implementation of a pictographic prescription. As a result, compliance with the drug treatment among the illiterate rose from 60 percent to 93.33 percent. There was no change in compliance in the literate group. It was concluded, however, that this type of intervention is limited to the improvement of the patients' health condition, because the increase in compliance occurs both with regard to the drug treatment and precariousness.

The study aimed to describe the sociodemographic, labor, and training profile of aides and technicians in oral health working in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Information reported by 255 oral health aides and technicians who attended the Rio Grande do Sul Dental Congress in 2010 and 2012 was analyzed. The survey used a written, structured, and self-administered questionnaire, organized into three thematic blocks under these categories: identification (gender, age, marital status, state/city, income, license, ties and board/labor union registration), training (establishment, duration, incentive/difficulties in keeping updated/training) and work process (professional competencies and attributions). The results showed that work process differences between oral health aides and technicians, as determined by their working ties with the National Health System, were mostly in the health promotion and prevention competency attributions. It was also found that the attributions of the working environment organization and clinical care competencies in oral health provide greater identity to the work of these professionals, regardless of their ties. The study points to the overlapping of skills and duties performed by oral health aides and technicians.

Working with groups is a prime strategy for health professionals, and it involves a process of subjectivity and establishment of community ties. A group of women in post-operative shoulder treatment was formed at the physiotherapy clinic of a hospital installed in the city of Curitiba, capital of the state of Paraná, Brazil, aiming to enhance the effects of conventional therapy, giving these women conditions to better cope with their pain and functional limitations. Qualitative research was carried out, which enabled the establishment of a description of the group process, as well as direct and extended contact with the subjects during six workshops held from October 2012 to March 2013. The women reported that the group was a welcoming space, where they shared life experiences, made friends, and learned from each other. This allowed them to rethink their behavior and enabled possibilities for changing attitudes. It was concluded that, given the need for humanization in care with a view to comprehensive care, using groups to support the physiotherapy process can be a strategy for a less reductionist practice that recognizes other people's needs.

The study aimed to identify and describe health promotion actions related to physical activity among elderly people at basic health units and the perception of those responsible for this practice. This was a cross-sectional survey using a quantitative approach carried out in Diamantina, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, in 20112. A 28-questions survey, organized in the form of a Likert scale, was used during the interviews carried out among 28 people in charge of such actions. Eleven educational health promotion actions related to physical activity among elderly people were found, five of which under the responsibility of teachers and students of a public school, while six under headed by professionals from the family health teams. The actions observed were ‘walk and exercise group (stretching),’ ‘back group,’ and ‘Qigong.’ Participants demonstrated their understanding of the benefits afforded by phy-sical activity for the elderly, the impact these actions have on public health, and the need for ongoing training.