Abstract
The aim of this paper is to discuss the transformations that have taken place in work, the demands of training, and new skills in the primary health policy, with particular emphasis on the impacts on the work of physicians in the family health units in Portugal. The qualitative survey was carried out by querying documentary sources: Decrees, laws, action plans, and reports on the policies and organizational structure in health facilities, adopting content analysis to process data. It recommends that the commitment to the renewal process entails new instituting movements, which empower the (re)construction of the medical identity, understood not only as individuation/identification, rather constituted as an ongoing process linked to personal identity, enabling the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of something that gives meaning to the work done. For work in health, we value a new professional profile provided with highly qualified, integrating, inseparably, theory, technical, practical, and social knowledge. ‘Service provision’ and ‘health care’ have a subjective and individual dimension; however, at the same time they are expressed in groups and populations, and are guided by cultural values and clinical standards recognized by science.
Keywords
Health; work; training