Abstract
The study aimed to describe and analyze everyday aspects of childbirth care in a university hospital in southern Brazil. The expression “taking off the coat” serves as a metaphor to illuminate the process of converting the obstetrician nurse into a researcher in a hospital environment. This is a qualitative research work that made use of the perspective socio-anthropology as a theoretical and methodological framework. The results showed a recurrent lack of information about medical conduct and decisions given to women, disregarding them as subjects of rights, despite what the policy of humanization of childbirth, revealing nuances of childbirth and birth based on the model assistance technocracy. This current care model in teaching hospitals requires important changes through the incorporation of practices with scientific foundations, the inclusion of obstetric nurses and respect for women as the protagonists of this event.
Keywords:
University hospital; Obstetrics; Participant observation; Ethnography.