The health professions: A critical analysis of the culture of caring

ABSTRACT 

The text discusses the role and performance of nurses and physiotherapists in the National Health System of Brazil and, particularly, in the family health services. The emergence of new health professions and the redefinition of traditional roles and activities associated with more established professions are discussed in detail. Attention is placed on the challenges posed on multi-professional teams, especially on the new professionals, who are part of a government effort in search a more humane health care, universal coverage, integration of services and effective, good-quality, health providers. The field of public health (also known in Latin America as “salud colectiva”) has contributed to the achievement of such goals, by means of an articulate  cross-fertilization with the Social Sciences, despite (or to some extent, because of) ­ the existence of conflict and tensions between different frontiers of knowledge and practices. Clashes between paradigms -- for example, between social epidemiology and the social sciences, and their different roles assigned to professions and professionalism, may or may not be conducive to advances in knowledge in the health field. Under some circumstances, the dialogue with the Social Sciences has been unfortunately broken or discontinued by health care academics and professionals, in favor of an exclusive interaction with the general field of the so-called “Health Sciences”.  

Keywords: caring; preventive physiotherapy; professions; family health services