Abstract

BIANCHESSI, Desiree Luzardo Cardozo  and  TITTONI, Jaqueline. Work, health and subjectivity in the viewpoint of administrative and operational workers in a public general university hospital. Physis [online]. 2009, vol.19, n.4, pp. 969-988. ISSN 0103-7331.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0103-73312009000400004.

This study falls within the field of occupational health, analyzing the hospital work from the experiences of workers. The purpose of this investigation was to analyze the suffering of administrative and operational workers and the strategies of health production, due to the frequent occurrence of illnesses and absences from work. The conceptual field articulates the concepts of work, health and subjectivity, seeking the extension of the analysis of the focus in clinical diagnosis. The methodological strategies are based on the assumptions of intervention research, using the group device to operate in the field, combined with individual interviews, observations in the workplace and photographic intervention. The analyses show the configuration of the suffering of administrative and operational worker as related to the experience of invisibility, generated by collisions in labor relations in the organization of work at the hospital, where his place is associated with unworthiness and disqualification. Games of truth in the hospital show that the work recognized as having value is linked to medicine and to the prominent place medical knowledge historically occupies in the hospital. The workers studied suggest experiences of powerlessness in the face of demands of patients and families, considering the limitations imposed by public health policies. In view of the tensions generated in these experiences, they produce strategies linked to the production of health and coping with daily work in the hospital. The intervention research has provided multiple assemblages in the group, making it feasible to carry out the necessary changes in working relationships, bringing new meaning and seeking other modes of subjectivation.

Keywords : worker's health; mental health and work; suffering hospital work; subjectivity and work.