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

The research that originated this article aimed to analyze social representations of emergency professionals about the prevention of recurrences due to suicide attempt. It was a research based on the theory of social representations in the procedural approach, with thirty emergency workers from a public hospital in Bahia, Brazil, carried out in 2017. The question was based on the understanding of these professionals about the prevention of recurrence of suicide attempt, and the analysis was performed using the cognitive network analysis model. The semantic network was composed of 260 vertices and 431 edges with an average degree equal to 2.61. The main terms that radiated meaning to the discourse of the social group were ‘monitoring’, ‘psychologist’ and ‘patient’, demonstrating a perception of prevention for recurrences by suicide attempts in a positively complex and multidisciplinary way. Participants understand that the phenomenon has particularities that require both in-hospital transformations – by encouraging demystification and combating prejudice of patients at risk of dying from suicide, restructuring of management, screening and monitoring during the stay of hospitalization – as well as extra-hospital, evoking the work between the different levels of care and support networks, in addition to dynamism and comprehensive care as a resource to prevent recurrences of these patients.

The objective of the study was to understand the perception of managers, providers and auditors of the process of contracting within the Brazilian Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde). This was a descriptive study, using a qualitative approach, carried out in Maringá, Paraná, in September and October 2017, with managers, service providers and auditors who work in the system. Data were collected through guiding questions. The analysis led to the definition of two categories: opportunities and barriers in the contracting process with the Health System; evaluation and use of instruments in the System audit. Regarding the opportunities, it was evidenced that the contracting process improves the quality of health management based on specific legislation and that the main barrier is related to the scale of values practiced by the Health System. In relation to the second category, the analysis indicates that the use of instruments allows the standardization of parameters, which provides greater assertiveness to the contracting process. We conclude that it is necessary to use an audited instrument validated and agreed with providers, in order to ensure transparency and better results in term of the agreed upon goals.

Distance education has advanced in the Brazilian context, where it is perceived as the object of study in this essay. When considering the changes that took place in the teaching work process because of the distance modality, this study aimed to tension the development of the productivity of teaching work through its rationalization and its possible relationship with the value of the workforce in a broad sense. Specifically, it analyzes the functionality of education for the expanded reproduction of capital, as well as its positive contradictions and limits and having as its motto the Bologna process, the implications of an educational free zone. The main conclusions were: if, on the one hand, there is a democratization of access to education, the rationalization of work, in addition to enabling more accessible education, is immediately related to the precariousness and alienation of the teaching worker and, intrinsically and more broadly, with the decrease in the value of the general labor force, since there is a decrease related to the costs production of the labor force merchandise.

The objective of this study was to analyze the relationship between the overexploitation of the workforce and the concept of wear and tear on workers in enterprises installed in two municipalities of the Confection Center of the interior of the State of Pernambuco, Brazil. The study, based on a qualitative approach, was developed in 2017 and 2018 in the municipalities of Toritama and Santa Cruz do Capibaribe. Fourteen semi-structured interviews were carried out, following a pre-established script organized in three priority axes: worker profile; social and work aspects; and aspects related to health. In analyzing the data, the totality and history of social relations and their interaction with particular social processes (dialectical method) were considered. The essential guiding categories for understanding the structure and dynamics of the workers’ health-disease process were: overexploitation of the workforce, working hours, work process and production. The concepts of precariousness, intensification, workloads, wear of the workforce were also important theoretical factors of the analysis. The overexploitation of the workforce was an essential element for understanding the process of premature wear and tear of the workforce, revealing a tendency towards premature exhaustion of these workers over the years.

This study characterizes the social dimension in the contexts represented in problem situations in a São Paulo state medical course that uses Problem-Based Learning. A total of 69 problem situations were analyzed, triggering the learning process from the first to the fourth grade and their respective tutor guides. To read the material, the Social Dimension Analysis Guide was used, developed by the researchers based on related documents and literature. For analysis, the discursive textual analysis method was adopted. The comparison between the learning objectives presented in the problem situations and in the guides showed disagreements and dichotomies. The characterization of the explored contexts did not portray the real territory: social equipment was scarcely addressed, but the areas of competence of individual, collective and management care placed a satisfactory emphasis on public policies. The analyzes of areas of risk, diversity and vulnerable groups were superficial and the intersectoral approach was little used. It is hoped, with these results, to provoke reflections about the construction of problem situations in problem-based learning, because the deepening of the description, such as the expansion of its approach, may favor the theoretical-practical articulation, the extended learning and the training medical care focused on comprehensive care.

The objective of this study was to identify typologies of precarious work in Primary Care from the perspective of Druck and Franco. Qualitative netnographic study carried out on the YouTube virtual platform, with Brazilian videos. Nine videos were selected for analysis. Iconographic analysis and thematic content analysis were used. The research was carried out from July 2018 to January 2019. Based on the results, four categories of analysis were identified: vulnerability of forms of insertion, intensification of work and outsourcing, loss of individual and collective identity, condemnation and abandonment of employee rights. The types of precarious work found included insecure and temporary hiring, excessive workload among nurses, poor working conditions, contracting via social organizations, living with fear of unemployment, loss of labor rights and wage delays, which have repercussions at work, in the worker’s life and in assistance to patients. We infer that the typologies of the precarious work identified tend to contribute to the distortion of Primary Healthcare services, given that they are not in line with its principles and guidelines, hindering professionals’ understanding of health factors and conditions, necessary to ensure integral care.

This article aims to present the main paths and impasses regarding the deinstitutionalization process in four cities in Greater Vitória, in Brazil. The described scenario occurred through operationalized research with the use of focus groups formed by workers from the Psychosocial Care Network. After the content analysis, deinstitutionalization from the perspective of Psychosocial Care Centers and Residential Therapeutic Services, as well as other important subthemes, such as the care network and the centrality of psychiatric hospitalization in the care process, resulted as themes. We consider that, despite the structural difficulties of the network, there is the engagement of many of these professionals in the work processes and we emphasize the importance of resistance in the fight for the guarantee of the Psychiatric Reform to ensure, in fact, the process of deinstitutionalization.

The COVID-19 epidemic required immediate planning by the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The government’s actions showed contradictions between the presidency and the Ministry of Health. The purpose of this article is to reconstruct the actions of the federal government in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. Such actions resulted in a policy organized on three fronts: the role of governors; the false dilemma between the economy and health and; the militarization of the Ministry of Health, done by filling the staff with military personnel. In the initial four months after the first registered case of COVID-19, the Ministry of Health left the front line of the actions and the states conducted the primary measures of confrontation through the purchase of materials and services from the private sector. A false division was established between the sanitary measures and the economic recovery measures. The conduct of public health was passed on to the military, changing the technical-political field. The way of management based on the denial of the epidemic and the absence of proposals by the Ministry of Health was characterized by the abandonment of health protection measures, objectified in the question ‘So what?’, delivered by the president of the republic when asked about deaths in the Brazil.

In early February 2020, the Brazilian government declared a public health emergency. In the second half of March, with the advance of the COVID-19 cases and the occurrence of the first death, other measures, considered emergency, started to be adopted. This text deals specifically with a set of measures with a direct impact on labor relations. In doing so, it seeks to reflect on how the context of the pandemic has been converted to government and business sectors as a pretext for the advancement of precarious work, drawing a scenario that is certainly harsher and more harmful to the health and life of those and those who make a living out of their own job.

The pandemic caused by the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is a worldwide public health emergency. Some occupational categories, such as health workers, are at high risk of exposure to the infection. This article aims to summarize and systematize aspects related to the health and working conditions of health workers in this pandemic, especially in Brazil, successful experiences in the protection of healthcare work in other countries and recommendations for the Brazilian context. Immediate initiatives to protect and combat the pandemic in other countries included as strategic points: adequacy of working conditions; systematic testing and specific assistance actions for healthcare workers. In order to face COVID-19 in Brazil, the following recommendations stand out: review of service flows and definition of characteristics and conditions for each stage of service; establishment of COVID-19 as a work-related disease for exposed groups; effective registration of ‘occupation’ in information systems; establishment of special conditions for carrying out work in the event of an epidemic; attention to working hours and actions to reduce occupational stressors. The performance of these workers is a central element in facing the pandemic, therefore, the plan to combat COVID-19 must include protection and preservation of their physical and mental health.