EDITORIAL
The 70 years of the University of São Paulo and the budget question
As the readers of REEUSP know, USP is celebrating its 70th anniversary, a theme that has been dealt on the two editorials of 2004. Its numbers are impressive. Some of them express its physical and structural dimensions. The campuses area has 74.5 million square meters with 1.4 billion square meters of built area. It has 36 teaching units, of which among the undergraduate courses and Master's and Doctorate programs account 72,867 students. It also has 4,884 professors and 14,900 employees. Other numbers also express its social and scientific contributions. It offers assistance activities to the population by its hospitals, totaling 16,050 admissions, 206,953 visits to the emergency department and 133,989 ambulatory attendances. It promotes around 9,767 scientific and cultural events and more than a thousand extracurricular courses per year. It graduates in average 4,600 new professionals in graduation courses and majors 30% of doctors of the country. According to ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) from the USA, it is on the 27th place among more than 5,000 universities around the world regarding to the production of scientific articles. Its teaching staff and students receive prizes and other distinctions in Brazil and abroad.
However, if these numbers express its importance and make us proud, other numbers worry us. With a budget of R$ 1,575 billion for 2004, 87% of the total is due to the salary of the professors, employees and the retired ones. There is a need of higher funds to keep and improve teaching and research. Thereby, a debate is open not only to USP, but to the whole society for increasing the state financing or creating new sources for decreasing the expenses of this huge machine of teaching and research.
Some people affirm the government can't increase the finance of superior teaching and, for this reason, mechanisms must be created in order to capture resources from private initiative. Others advocate the charge of payment from students with family income enough to pay their studies; and others say the students already pay through taxes and, for that, there must be more contribution from the government. The discussion is open, the past and present of USP are firmed, but we need to look after its future. The economic dimension can threat it. The contribution of the university for the scientific, cultural and social development of the country is immeasurable. Therefore, no nation can allow a cultural and scientific good so valuable of this heritage be in risk.
For those who criticize the high expenses generated by public universities, we leave the answer form a dean of Harvard University when president Roosevelt criticized his expenses on education: "If you think the education is expensive, why don't you try ignorance?" We, Brazilians, pay high for that.
This issue number 3 presents a work made with nurses from 15 institutions in Sao Paulo city, focusing on identifying the institutional and individual conditioners for the nursing workers' adherence to precautions/isolation on care. Unfortunately, by this study, it was perceived that some institutions use inadequate, outdated and different precautions form those recommended by governmental agencies.
Another study still concerning adherence, which evaluates the compliance of patients with non-oncologic chronic pain to the treatment and identifies the relationships between beliefs of health control and compliance, detected a high rate of partial compliance and non-compliance with the treatment and patients with higher "internality" beliefs were less compliant with the treatment.
The role of the sexual partner on the social support for the rehabilitation of mastectomized women was researched in 9 partners of women in this condition in the countryside of Sao Paulo. A study of epistemological intention about the Imogene King's goal achievement theory and its contribution for knowledge and practice of nurses who work in the family health Program (FHP) is also present on the reflection made by colleagues from Ceará.
This issue presents the process of organizational culture formation in a philanthropic hospital in Sao Paulo City, the meaning of team work in the rehabilitation of people with congenital craniofacial malformation (a study that sought to reflect the phenomenon engendering convergences and divergences, outlining to express the differences and continuous learning), the perception of hospitalized children in school age on the exam accomplishment (children cooperate with the exams despite the fear for noting them as part of their treatment) and the nursing diagnosis on 17 patients in the preoperatory period of cardiac surgery.
The concern on the costs in the nursing area is present in two articles: one which involves cost teaching in graduate nursing schools surveying 28 professors; the other one presents a spreadsheet cost model used for training and development of nursing staff in a hospital organization.
The last two articles in this issue, last but not least, show on the first one that, in spite of the search for the integration of the human being presented on nursing discourses, it was observed that the nurse professional formation emphasizes the technical dimension and gives few possibilities for the professional's internal growth. On the second one, the weaning experiences among women from the same family, it was verified that policymakers' discourses on breast-feeding seem to influence a lot on this practice, working better than the previous generations of the family.
We hope we can help you on your self-growth.
Once more, thank you for your reading.
Prof.ª Dr.ª Ana Maria Kazue Miyadahira
Editora
Prof.ª Dr.ª Valéria Castilho
Membro do Conselho de Editores
Prof.ª Dr.ª Maria Júlia Paes da Silva
Presidente do Conselho de Editores
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
24 Nov 2008 -
Date of issue
Sept 2004
