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

This article aims to analyze an unexpected by-product found in the master’s dissertation research entitledThe color of obstetric violence. Among the data collected in the interviews, it was noteworthy that 86% of white women could have a companion of their own choice at some point during hospitalization for childbirth. Among the black women interviewed, only 33% were authorized to exercise this same right guaranteed by Law No. 11,108 of 2005. The justification used by the health services for women who were denied the right to a companion was the implementation of control and prevention protocols in regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. In maternity hospitals where these pregnant women were hospitalized for childbirth, there was no unrestricted prohibition on the presence of a companion during hospitalization.Institutions analyzed case by case. This subjective evaluation, without defined criteria, showed a racial bias in selectivity. These violations of the rights of parturient women can be characterized as obstetric racism.

The objective of the study was to identify the behavior of informality in Brazil and Argentina, from 2012 to 2019. The conceptual definition of informality is based on legislation and labor relations. Based oninformation from official household surveys, the behavior of informality was explored according to then different sectors of economic activity and the classification of workers by income bracket. The period in question was characterized by transformations that increased the flexibility of labor relations, in a process of reconfiguration of the labor market driven by labor reforms that, in theory, would provide a reduction in the weight of informal employment in the occupational structure, as this flexibility to advance. The results do not suggest significant changes in the behavior of informality, and corroborate that this phenomenon continues to negatively affect, with greater intensity, the workers who most need social protection and guarantee of rights. Thus, the measures to make labor relations more flexible, at least considering the period under analysis, did not produce the promised results. There is also a relative convergence in the results found for the two countries.

This article analyses the transformations that have taken place in the Professional Rehabilitation Program of the Brazilian Institute of Social Security since 2009. It is considered that the aforementioned service was conceived and operated based on the so-called field of Workers’ Health, but since 2018 suffered a process of disruption. The characteristics of this process are revealed through the analysis of technical manuals of procedures (2011, 2016 and 2018), as they contain theoretical concepts, organization rules and service objectives. The article is developed in three parts that sequentially show the construction of the Workers’ Health field, its insertion in the Social Security public policy and, finally, its operationalization and its transformations through manuals of procedures. The results reveal a process of de-structuring of the program, which moves away from a multidimensional conception of worker’s health, while the biological dimension becomes central.

This study analyzed the perspective of Physical Education undergraduates on the exercise of their future profession, the labor market and gender issues. Four Focus Groups were developed, which were analyzed using the Content Analysis technique. Four categories of analysis were outlined: Condition of women, Confronting stereotypes, Perceptions about Physical Education and The Physical Education market for them. It was concluded that the students’ prospect is to face a devalued labor market and marked by inequalities between men and women.

This study aimed to evaluate the work context of professionals from the Mobile Emergency Care Service in Fortaleza, Brazil. A cross-sectional and descriptive research was carried out, with the participation of a non-probabilistic sample of 229 participants from different professional categories who work in the service. Participants responded to the Work Context Assessment Scale, composed of three factors. Data were analyzed using descriptive and multivariate statistics. The results showed that the factors analyzed in the scale – Work Organization, Socio-professional Relationships and Working Conditions – presented critical indices, which signal an alert for the risk of illness. It is concluded that the professionals of the Mobile Emergency Care Service experience a potential risk that could trigger damage to occupational health. It is recommended that measures be taken to improve the organization of work, their working conditions and their socio-professional relationships.

Empirical studies have identified shortcomings and precariousness in the matrix support activities of the Family Health Support Centers. This article, based on diverse unsystematic experiences and selected literature, defends two interconnected theses that criticize aspects of the original federal regulations for the performance of these Nuclei: a conception – implicit in the regulations – of primary health care as a scenario for actions located only in fields of shareable competences, on the one hand; and the option of inserting these Centers relatively outside the care flow of users, on the other. It is argued that both, probably, generated adverse effects involved in the problems of operation of these Nuclei: they contributed to the overestimation of their expected results, to their underutilization and institutional underdevelopment and to the precariousness of their legitimacy, hampered by the 2017 National Primary Care Policy and seriously affected by the federal underfunding in 2019. The improvement of the Family Health Support Centers is defended and their insertion in the care flow between primary health care and the secondary care, to reduce the isolation between the two and improve the personalized coordination of care, facilitate the legitimacy of collaborative care, matrix support and the continuing education of professionals in Brazil.

The Extended Family Health and Primary Care Center (Núcleo Ampliado de Saúde da Família e Atenção Básica – NASF-AB) was created in Brazil to support and expand Family Health care and management. Its performance regarding workers’ health and health and environment in rural and water territories is analyzed with families that live from artisanal fishing and peasant agriculture. This is a qualitative research that was anchored in references from the Sociology of Absences and Collective Health, in the latter’s particular approach to the relations between health, environment, and work. The research used focus groups to produce narratives of professionals from the Extended Center for Family Health and Primary Care in municipalities in the semiarid and coastal regions of the Northeast. The socioeconomic and cultural singularities of the rural and water populations were evidenced; invisibilities and potentialities about their ways of life and work; work-related burdens and diseases; and aspects of the performance of the Extended Family Health Center and Primary Care through interactions with work and the environment in these territories. The care offered to these populations partially considers their sociocultural, productive, environmental, and health specificities, and it is necessary to expand the recognition of their ways of life and work, aiming at more successful interventions on health problems and needs; which poses challenges to health education for the Unified Health System.

The work of the pharmaceutical professional in Primary Health Care is under permanent construction. This article analyzes the work performed by pharmacists in managing what is prescribed and what is actually required in primary care in the Brazilian Federal District. This is a case study, with triangulation in the collection and analysis of data, obtained through interviews and observation of the work of pharmacists from five Health Regions, resulting in three categories: structure of pharmacies; work organization; time and tasks. The study shows that the pharmacist’s performance is centered on the following groups of actions: breaks; managerial/logistics work; interruption; service to users. Tasks related to user assistance are punctual and sporadic, with the focus on management, especially logistics. Despite the structural limits of pharmacies, there are elements in the context that can favor the expansion of technical assistance activities: guaranteeing access to medicines as an ethical principle; the regulations; the learning attitude of professionals and openness to face the unusual; the connection with the needs of the Basic Health Unit team; the collective action of pharmacists and training on pharmaceutical care.

The communication process is central to the doctor- atient relationship. It is a fact that to avoid dysthanasia, palliative care must be available as an alternative. Thus, the objective was to evaluate the quality of bad news communication performed by physicians from the perspective of patients in the process of finitude, comparing their rates between those in palliative care and those in dysthanasia. A quantitative research was carried out, with a non- robabilistic sample, made up of 234 cancer patients in the process of dying, coming from five hospital units in the state of Ceará, Brazil, who answered two questionnaires—one biodemographic and the other assessing communication, analyzed by means of descriptive and bivariate statistics. The results demonstrated the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. While dysthanasia patients expressed that they were better prepared for establishing adequate communication, those in palliative care reported a less negative experience regarding “communicating bad news”—the result of adequate preparation by the palliative care physician as well as effective family participation in the therapeutic decision. It is concluded that the steps of preparation for communication, transmission of information, reception and closure should be based on identifying the patients’ prior content about the disease and their expectations of information.

The research that originated this article aimed to identify experiences of institutional support withinthe scope of Primary Health Care, in order to understand how the proposal is disseminated, the limits, difficulties and results it has achieved in different contexts and realities. The mapping was carried out through documentary research in the Primary Care Community of Practice, resulting in the inclusion of 38 experience reports. The data corroborate the potential of institutional support to foster shared management practices and arrangements in the implementation of health policies and programs, in promoting changes in the teamwork process and in intra- and inter-institutional integration. It is used as a resource to transform normative indicators into social relations and organizational devices in the daily care and management of the Brazilian Unified Health System. The main challenges identified refer to resistance arising from cultural and communicational dynamics related to management concepts and practices influenced by the classical administration model, in addition to a set of operational issues that negatively affect the results achieved. The systematization of experiences made it possible for us to understand that institutional support demands complex mediation skills, which need to be better understood and implemented, especially with regard to community participation.