Concepções sobre riscos na perspectiva de profissionais de vigilância sanitária

Abstract

Health surveillance (HS) is defined as a group of actions capable of eliminating, reducing or preventing health risks and of intervening in sanitary problems resulting from the environment, the production and circulations of goods and the provision of health-care related services. This definition introduced the concept of risk, highlighting the role of HS: to control the risk in the consumption of products and technologies, in the use of health services, and in the exposition to environmental conditions. When intervening in sanitary risk, the HS professional needs to not only interact with others, but also integrate technical knowledge and legal framework in order to control an object which has multiple dimensions and properties and requires various forms of investigation.. However, there is a gap that is precariously explored within the HS regarding the comprehension of risk, especially when the magnitude of this objection to its actions is considered and the meanings of risk assigned by its professionals have not been studied. To understand the meanings attributed to risk in HS actions, a qualitative study was conducted using Symbolic Interactionism as a theoretical background and Grounded Theory as a method. Based on interviews with managers and professionals from local, state and national health surveillance agencies, a theoretical structure that contains the meanings of risk and its related categories was created.Understanding the meanings of risk was not restricted to its expression approaching the contexts, conditions, actions and consequences for understanding how professionals interpret the risk and assume its meanings in places in which they operate. The risk passes through the technical description, in the objective sense that refers to both formal aspects related to administrative, political and legal issues, as to the subjective aspects, linked to representations and value systems, surpassing the merely quantitative sense. These meanings present two inseparable and interdependent categories: the damage and the danger. In conclusion, the professional performs its action based on the meanings that the risk has to them and that emerge from the interaction that they establish with their service, the regulated sector, with the population and with themselves. The expressed meanings of risk are pervaded by beliefs, rules, values and socially produced ways of thinking, marking identities and particularities of the groups interviewed. It reflects the diversification of meanings of risk in the delimitation of the object, in the ways of acting and in the establishment of forms of control.