Interpersonal relationships on the organizational environment: health professionals’ social representations

Abstract

The present investigations’ subject matter is the interpersonal relationship experienced by health professionals in general hospitals’ intensive care units (ICU’s). It has the purpose of explicating these professionals’ symbolic constructions related to the interpersonal relationships with their peers in their work reality by understanding these relationships as a bundle of meanings marked by socio-historical contradictions and opened to human action’s potential and institutional character. It also intends to go further into the search for factors implied in the origin and dynamics of the relationship between these professionals’ work and symbolic environment. Health professionals’ social interaction field in two general hospitals’ ICU’s of a Brazilian northeastern town was the locus about which the study has developed its epistemological view. It was developed along with 13 professionals (2 social workers, 9 nurses and 2 physiotherapists), who exposed their perceptions correcting the topic. The qualitatively analyzed results was based on the Social Representations’ theoretical-methodological assumptions, allowing for the conclusion that the representations elaborated by the professionals about work’s interpersonal relationships bring the individual and group’s institutional mark. This reality’s explication certainly opens paths for the professionals to create new forms of comprehension of work interpersonal relationships’ construction.