The meaning of the work for the healthcare professionals in the Family Health Strategy

Abstract

The aim of the study was to understand the work meaning under the perception of healthcare professionals of Family Health Strategy. It is related to a critical-analytical research with healthcare professionals who attend in Sobral’s Basic Care, Ceará. The people from the study consist of doctors, nursies, nursing assistants, dental surgeons, oral health agent aides and community health workers linked to Family Healthcare Strategy. To select the subjects, it was sought to identify, from the Job Content Questionaire applying, those exposed to mental illness related to work, in total 433 professionals. Then, these participants were classified into groups representing the highest and lowest propensity to develop illness, divided by different professional cathegories. From these groups, it was sorted eleven workers for applying the open interview,  making use of the script of the Interview of Clinical Deepening and Representation of the Work. The interviews were analysed by the discourse analysis technique and grouped into two analytical categories: The work role in the identity formation: (dis)satisfaction and professional achievement; and the meaning of work, the search for pleasure. The results show work as identity constituent and life experiences, interfering in personal and affective relationships, experienced paradoxically, highlighted as a pleasure source, satisfaction and personal fulfillment, and also characterized as lack of recognition, professional appreciation, work overload and impotence in face of the demand from the users, that not only generate dissatisfaction, but also illness.