Representações sociais de saúde e doença dos profissionais de enfermagem do noturno: guia para propor ações em educação e saúde

Abstract

This essay will discuss the social representations (SR) of health and illness on the perspective of nurses that work on the night shift. The SR reflect the way individuals, groups and social personas make up their knowledgement by taking as reference their own social and cultural contexts. The objective of this essay was to create actions on health education for nurses that work in the night shift, taking as a starting point their social representations on night shift work schedule.The study was focused on SR and based on the central nucleus theory. A private hospital located in Porto Alegre/RS was used as field of study. One hundred nurse professionals from the night shift took part of the study. A questionnaire containing stimulus questions was used for data collection. The software Ensemble de Programmes Permettant l’Analyse des Evocations was used to analyse the evoked words. The essay was done in conformity with the Resolution 446/2012. Night shift nurses’ SR concerning the moment before their duties were constituted by attributes that represent their necessity of previous organization. The effort to keep themselves awake and rested was evoked as well, once their shift requires them to be much more aware and concentrated on their tasks than those of the morning shift. The participants also claimed about being tired, sleepy and needed of resting on the post shift period, reflections of their working journey of 12 hours in a roll. The night shift SR related to health were composed by words such as: food, pain, insomnia, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and sleepiness – what points the night shift as a non healthy environment. The SR related to illness were composed by the words: pain, anxiety, depression, insomnia, hypertension, obesity and varicose veins. This same group evokes words that represent their worrying on preventing those illness or similar ones and its causes. The SR related to their personal lives were composed by evocations such as lack of time, absence and longing, what points the night shift as an obstacle for the maintenance of social and parental relationships, once night shift workers can’t always be present on family’s parties and friends hangouts. The SR related to the period before and after the night shift, to workers’ health, to illness and to workers’ personal lives, guided and endorsed this study’s intervention proposal, based on health education and health promotion principles. Health education actions were composed based on three caring dimensions: towards the nurses, towards the care management and towards the institution. A series of actions of health education can contribute for the better qualification of night shift workers environment.