PURPOSE: to assess how health professionals who work at companies in the Manaus Industrial Pole understand the Hearing Loss Prevention Program and apply its practices at work. METHODS: semi-structured interviews with twenty occupational health physicians and twenty audiologists were conducted using a qualitative method. RESULTS: following the content analysis method, the professionals were divided into three categories according to their understanding of the Hearing Loss Prevention Program: pragmatic view, disciplinary view and systemic view. These categories reflect their professional attitude and make clear the limitations and advances of companies regarding their workers' health, in particular their hearing health. CONCLUSIONS: this study shows that there is still a big gap between what is proposed and what is actually done. Based upon the collected data, it can be concluded that health professionals who work at companies in the Manaus Industrial Pole address relevant aspects of the programme, but they implement actions in a disconnected way, focusing on the minimum legal requirements and thereby limiting the efficiency of the program. The reasons for that are: a topic for further studies, aiming to gather all the social actors and clarify the context in several dimensions.
Occupational Health; Hearing Loss; Noise