Qualidade de vida no trabalho: reflexões críticas a respeito do trabalho de enfermagem na urgência e emergência em hospital público de grande porte

Abstract

Introduction: The labor is among the most important circumstances which impacts on people’s lives. This in turn, among the many perspectives of labor, leads to three different convergent visions, which deserve the deference of this study, they are: (1) the Foucauldian analysis over the humankind only performing labor when at risk of death, plus its intensity grows as much as that risk and it also becomes more rentable as the access to subsistence decreases; (2) the Marxist vision, in the capitalism context, in which the man sells labor so he can make part of the social reproduction: to product and to consume; and (3) about the Dejourian theory, the labor can be the source of achievement, growing and subsistence and it can also become the source of dissatisfaction, anger and disinterest. The triad manifest economic exploration, in which the man does not revise himself in his mechanic, repetitive and alienated labor headed towards the product, in which he doesn’t control all the process, not resulting in a professional achievement. Besides that, that situation promotes uninterrupted maintenance to the hostile conditions of personal, professional and management conflicts, exceeded labor and insufficient resources on environmental or organizational levels, resulting in a lot of prejudice to the worker’s mental and physical health. In this paper, the hospital nursing professional is the protagonist and deeply experiences the trilogy of the referred meaning of labor. Objective: To analyze the main factors, which determine the quality of working life (QWL) in nursing on urgent/emergency level, at a large public hospital, within the scope of the “Sistema Único de Saúde _(SUS)”. Methodology: It is a study with a qualitative-quantitative approach, which promotes a dialogue between thematic and descriptive content. It was used the focus group research technique and applied a social-professional and economic questionnaire, together with the nursing care team. The analysis’ subject turned out to be the nursing team which works at the “Pronto Socorro (PS) do Hospital de Clínicas da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (HC-UFU)”, on the urgent and emergency levels. Nurses, auxiliaries and nursing technicians were also part of the study by convenient sampling, in those: 104 respondents to the questionnaire and 8 focus group deponents. Results: The study showed a reality that directly affects (QWL) and the social life, highlighting the relationship among the teams, allocation in between the nursing staff (work overload and work hours), the professional valorization by the management, the proper remuneration, the convenient material resources, structural and work conditions, plus the unrealistic expectations of the nursing team while facing their work, that means the influence of the media in establishing unfair or unreachable objectives when comparing their expectations with reality . The Illness caused by the work has been a permanent issue with repercussions on individual and collective levels. Nursing professionals are not satisfied with their (QWL); however, they maintain optimistic thoughts of hope for improvement in face of difficulties and the confrontations raised by them, those ones can be from: physical, social, inherent to work, psychic or environmental nature. Although some protective factors are present in this group, the stability / security and work experience and income increasing by being on call, those do not seem to compensate for the other aggravating factors such as advanced age, night work (sleep deprivation) and insufficient / inadequate resources. Final Considerations: The study showed urgency in the cautious, careful and effective listening of management, focused on people, strengthening the team, supporting the dialogue and the search for joint strategies with the nursing care team, which brings benefits to health and quality of life of these workers. The management team must provide better conditions and resources that are necessary in order to transform the reality in which these professionals are inserted, aiming towards experiencing comfort, well-being, appreciation, relief and recognition in the professional and personal scope, intending to provide quality of life at work.