EDITORIAL

Volume 7, third edition, of Trabalho, Educação e Saúde magazine discusses the relationship between health education background and work environment, based on essays addressing distinct professions and working areas. Health education environments also lead us to distinct scenarios, some of it more linked to the health care service context, some giving rise to questions derived from experiences in formal education institutions.

Juliano Teixeira Moraes and Eliane Teixeira Lopes essay, A formação de profissionais de saúde em instituições de ensino superior de Divinópolis, Minas Gerais [The training of health professionals in institutions of higher education in Divinópolis, State of Minas Gerais] discusses health education background and its changes, considering the merge of several educational policies, and taking into account curricular parameters, legislation, and the city's health policies. By talking directly with health courses' teachers, the authors showed that the efforts to develop new political and educational projects do not prevent such teachers to deal with considerable difficulties when adopting new study programs that properly contemplate multidisciplinary contents. Luiz Carlos Fadel de Vasconcellos, Carmen Verônica de Almeida and Dimitri Taurino Guedes essay, Vigilância em saúde do trabalhador: passos para uma pedagogia [Surveillance in occupational health: Steps Toward a Pedagogy], discusses the limited use of surveillance regarding the workers' health practices from a critical point of view. According to the authors' understanding, it is possible to attribute part of such lack to the public health agents' poor qualification; thus, they propose a method to provide qualification in work health practices based on Paulo Freire's theory and considering their 15-year expertise in qualification practices within health care service environments. In Marilene de Melo, Luiz Carlos Brant, Lucas de Oliveira and Alessandra Patrícia Santos essay, Qualificação de agentes comunitários de saúde: instrumento de inclusão social [Qualification of Community Health Agents: an Instrument for Social Inclusion], the social dimension of qualification is discussed, mainly regarding the analysis of work relationships and the qualification of community health agents. The authors intend to understand how such workers establish connections and signification within the scope of their education as community health agents, and the changes they can see in people's citizenship practices. In the essay Residência multiprofissional em saúde e pós-graduação lato sensu no Brasil: apontamentos históricos [Multiprofessional residency in healthcare and postgraduate education in Brazil: historical remarks], Soraya Diniz Rosa and Roseli Esquerdo Lopes use a social and hystorical background to create a discussion about the argument that considers Internship formation an answer to the need for changes in the hegemonic biomedical assistance model. Upon characterizing and discussing the problems of such graduation courses, the authors propose a reflection about the commitments necessary to achieve the purposes that could make such graduation courses relevant within the scope of the Brazilian Unified Health System.

The debate on the changes in contemporary work environment found relevant contents in studies relating gender and work, not only to understand such changes, but also to promote it, guided by a sense of equity in distinct levels. Considering such references, Tania Steren dos Santos discusses the results of her survey in the essay Discriminações, estímulos e obstáculos no campo profissional da medicina: um olhar de gênero e gerações [Discrimination, stimulation and obstacles in the medicine professional field: a look at gender and generation]. The work allows us to reflect on the relationship between the symbolic universe and objectivity, as well as creation of stereotypes, pointing out that, to achieve a more egalitarian scenario for men and women, it is necessary to implement public policies aiming at such purpose.

In the essay Relaciones intergubernamentales y política sanitaria en Argentina en el contexto de la crisis 2001/3 [Intergovernmental relations and sanitation policy in Argentina during the 2001-3 crisis], the author Magdalena Chiara discusses the construction of an agenda for the health care segment in Argentina and the relegitimation of the State in the context of an increasing crisis scenario. Chiara's analysis focuses on the Federal Health Council, an intergovernmental coordination agency understood as an arena where projects and thoughts are intensely discussed. She argues that the fragility of central government leadership before the provinces is an important issue for such segment, which policy is still marked by hystorical fragmentation.

Marcos Barbosa de Oliveira essay is a sharp criticism to management procedures that, together with the increasing importance of assessment practices, links additional remuneration to productivity. In his work called A estratégia dos bônus: três pressupostos e uma consequência [Bonus strategy: three assumptions and one consequence], the author proposes a reflection about the logic of commoditization, which is sustained by capitalist ethics and became the base for work relations in several institutions. Oliveira presents to readers some consequences of these practices within research institutions, such as interfering in the selection of problems and study methods.

The section Debate promotes a discussion over Valquíria Padilha's essay, Qualidade de vida no trabalho num cenário de precarização: a panaceia delirante [Quality of work life in a setting of precariousness: a delusional panacea], in which she resumes the discussion about the combined factors that characterize the situation of precariousness at work, under the orders of the capital, and questions quality of life practices at work (QVT, in Portuguese) as ways and means to increase productivity and hide structural problems. Francisco Lacaz, in the essay Qualidade de vida n(d)o trabalho: um conceito político e polissêmico [Quality of life of/at work: a political and polysemic concept], proposes that the historicity of QVT concept must be reconstructed, following the changes in it during the 1950's, through the specificities in the 1960's and 1970's, and up to its reset in the globalization context. Lacaz draws attention to the several meanings that such expression may assume, emphasizing the capacity of the word "quality" to assume meanings that express class interests, including opposing meanings, and reassures the importance of thinking about the relation between "health and work", towards a counterhegemonic QVT. Assuming the continuity of his arguments before the ones presented by Padilha, José Newton Garcia, in the essay Qualidade de vida no trabalho: controle e escondimento do malestar do trabalhador [Quality of life at work: control and concealment of worker discontent], provides us with reflections based on the inability of conciliating worker's quality of life and capital. Based on Castoriadis, the author lead us to question the capital's rationality, reinforcing the up-to-dateness of Marx thoughts regarding such debate. Rosemeire Scopinho, in the essay Qualidade de vida versus condições de vida: um binômio dissociado [Quality of life versus living conditions: a disassociated binomial] remembers that QVT actions are included within the scope of management practices that increase managers' control power regarding worker's knowledges and feelings in order to prevent productivity risks. In contraposition to QVT, the author suggests the adoption of a notion of living conditions, comprising both material and subjective dimensions, and includes in her essay the methodological challenges arising from such options to surveys that intend to discuss the relation between work and living conditions. In the essay Vida, saúde e trabalho: dialogando sobre qualidade de vida no trabalho em um cenário de precarização [Life, health and work: a discussion about Quality of Life at Work in a scenario of precariousness], Milton Athayde and Jussara Brito, without renouncing to a material and hystorical approach, question the ways and means to recognize, in the movements of real, change indicators pointing out to new societary and relational forms. From a theoretical point of view, the authors reclaim the ergology perspective and the concept of activity, proposing that it should be used to support surveys and analyses of concrete work situations.

This issue presents a account by Clemilson Silva et al., Formação técnica do agente comunitário de saúde: desafios e conquistas da Escola Técnica de Saúde do Tocantins [Technical training of community health agents: challenges and achievements of the Technical School of Health of Tocantins], that presents the experience of community health agents' technical education developed by the Technical School of Tocantins State, which promoted the education of 2,219 students/civil servants.

Professor Brena Paula Fernandez conducts this issue's interview with Hugh Lacey, who addressed the theme of science philosophy, discussing subjects as the interaction between social and cognitive values and scientific practices, the relation between the development of techno science and democracy, and the role of social in the writing of research agendas.

Trabalho, Educação e Saúde also publishes two reviews: the first, by Cézar Henrique Maranhão, discusses the work A crise estrutural do capital [The Structural Crisis of Capital] by István Mészáros; and the second, by Gracia Gondim, discusses the book Territórios e identidades: questões e olhares contemporâneos [Territories and Identities: Contemporary Matters and Looks], organized by Frederico Guilherme de Araújo and Rogério Haesbaerth.

Isabel Brasil Pereira

Angélica Ferreira Fonseca

Carla Macedo Martins

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  28 Sept 2012
• Date of issue
  Nov 2009