Trabalho, Educação e Saúde - TES (Work, Education and Health) is an open access scientific journal, edited by the Joaquim Venâncio Polytechnic School of Health, from Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
Editorial
Article
The goal of this article is to reconstruct the recent history of community health agent professionalization in the ambit of the family health strategy, developing articulated analyses of professional education and labor management policies via political processes that have been developed, the strategies that have been deployed, the norms that have been established, and the legislation that has been produced. This article also reflects on the Federal Labor Prosecutor's Office performance in this process and of the challenges in the political scenario of these workers' organized movement, particularly on the National Community Health Agents' Confederation, aiming at these workers' actual technical qualification and at regulating their access and employment ties.
Article
This study is based on a critical analysis of work management in the public health sector in Joinville (State of Santa Catarina), with regards to the daily work situation of health care workers in the basic Unified National Health System (SUS) units. It identifies a few of the health service's operating principles, as set forth by the management such as work domination mechanisms, and which result from its division, as follows: the fragmentary nature of work organization in the health sector, management's conflict domination, worker control by production goals, and health care worker resistance to imposed workloads. The study uses the following research techniques to show the work division: interviews and direct observation of the work.
Article
This article reflects on competency assessments in technical nursing education, their implications, challenges, and propositions as a way to integrate the views those involved have regarding the health teaching-learning process. Assessment as a path towards possible transformation and emancipation qualifies and dignifies teaching and learning. The words used in the assessment, when used to inspire acts of care, may give the apprentice autonomy, allow educators to undertake reviews, lead to satisfaction and security among caregivers, to comfort and happiness among users, and to quality for both health services and for the health system.
Article
This text is part of a survey carried out regarding the relationship between midtier workers and their work in public health organizations, which was aimed at rethinking the current health work management proposals. The goal was to understand the impact the current changes made in the labor world had on administrative agents, a professional health service group that is important from the quantitative viewpoint. The analysis' theoretical point of reference is a line in labor sociology which Dubar denominates as professional group sociology and is situated between traditional labor sociology, very centered on the salary issue, and a new organizational sociology that focuses less intensely on analyzing internal modes of management. The field work, which involved detailing the professional track records of 18 administrative workers, was carried out in two public health units. It was noticed, among them, that there is a great diversification in the forms of employment, professional backgrounds, and identity dynamics. It was clear, therefore, that multiple variables must be taken into account to understand how worker modes are built: professional qualifications, job ties, sector of professional performance, the amount of time the person has been in the area, and how the work is organized.
Article
This article analyzes the qualifications of dental office attendant (DOA) and dental hygiene technician (DHT) graduates, seeking to understand the importance technical courses have not only in improving their professional performance, individual and family incomes, but also their impact on these professionals' better placement in the work market. It shows that, despite the deficiencies these graduates mention, their schooling qualified them appropriately to perform their duties. However, the difficulties these professionals face in terms of collective representation, the lack of social prestige, and the low levels of professional credibility and respect they get from dentists remain hurdles to be faced. The lack of professional legitimacy that characterizes their work causes dental care assistance workers to be at the mercy of work market and health policy oscillations. The article claims that regulating these worker categories may not only lead to technical and ethical protection and to preventing professional monopoly formation, but also ensure social equality and justice norms for oral health professionals.
Review
Educação, comunicação e tecnologia educacional: interfaces com o campo da saúde. Simone Monteiro e Eliane Vargas (Orgs.). Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fiocruz, 2006. 252 p
Review
Reflexões im-pertinentes: história e capitalismo contemporâneo. Virgínia Fontes. Rio de Janeiro: Bom Texto, 2005, 328 p.
Ensaio
The pharmaceutical industry, advertising agencies, communication companies, and the retail market have implemented an intense marketing strategy aimed at boosting medication consumption. The scientific and technological revolution, in turn, changed illnesses treatment standards and its impact on the health sector gave rise both to the medicalization phenomenon and to the logic that these goods and services should be considered as merchandise, as any other. This fact brings a challenge about: in medication use, to what extent should therapeutic requirements aimed strictly at controlling diseases prevail? At what point does market pressure begin encouraging drug consumption? The media's exploitation of the symbolic value there is behind the drugs is a powerful instrument to induce behavior to increase product consumption. The magnitude of the problem has forced the State to regulate drug advertisements via laws, decrees, and codes which, through the years, have been being disrespected. On November 30 2000, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) published Collegiate Board Resolution (CBR) 102, once again in an attempt to impose limits on the sector. Over and beyond the stepped-up inspection efforts, this article discusses the regulation model itself, which has been unable to reach the goals it was designed to achieve.
Interview
A aula inaugural de Tereza Ramos, proferida no início do ano letivo na Escola Politécnica de Saúde Joaquim Venâncio/Fiocruz, no Rio de Janeiro, constituiu uma autêntica lição de participação política. Agente comunitário de saúde (ACS) desde 1978, atualmente Tereza é a presidente da Confederação Nacional de Agentes Comunitários de Saúde, que reúne as federações estaduais, abrangendo dez estados brasileiros, algumas anteriores ao Programa de Agentes Comunitários de Saúde (Pacs). Nesta entrevista¹, concedida um dia antes da palestra, Tereza conta um pouco sobre a luta protagonizada pelos agentes comunitários de saúde em busca de 'desprecarização' de seu trabalho. Essa luta culminou na edição da emenda constitucional nº 51, de fevereiro de 2006, e da lei 11.350, de outubro de 2006, que regulamenta a emenda, marcos legais de amparo à profissão de agente comunitário de saúde e exemplo de exercício de cidadania de Tereza e do grupo de ACS liderado por ela. Militante histórica do setor saúde, que cruzou o caminho de Sergio Arouca na VIII Conferência Nacional de Saúde, também opina sobre a formação que os ACS vêm recebendo em curso técnico. Essa formação é considerada fundamental, junto com a 'desprecarização' dos vínculos e a regularização do acesso, para a efetiva profissionalização e reconhecimento dos direitos desses trabalhadores.
Experience Report
This article covers the theoretical and practical aspects involved in a Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) extension project called Corporality and Health Promotion, the main purpose of which is to articulate actions in the fields of teaching, assistance, and research. This project is aimed at providing undergraduate and graduate students learning and experience opportunities in the field of health education with adolescents; providing the elaboration of teaching technologies that will be used to guide adolescents in the theme; undertake educational activities among students, teenagers and young people who attend social projects and public schools; develop research projects among the services that will revert to new teaching, intervention, and know-ledge generation practices. The project is carried out in the health promotion field, by means of actions that emphasize issues related to the body and to sexuality and aimed at teenagers and young people who attend elementary and high schools in Embu, State of São Paulo.