He invisible work in health: psychological workload and strain on cleaning workers in a tertiary hospital

• Grant number: 21/14290-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2022
• End date: November 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Collective Health - Public Health
• Principal Investigator: Margareth Aparecida Santini de Almeida
• Grantee: Douglas Vieira Rocha
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FMB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The world of work has been going through a process of destabilization and flexibilization since the mid-1980s, with the reorganization of the productive forces. Added to this context is outsourcing, a contracting model used by companies and public institutions that seeks to reduce the costs and responsibilities of the contracting party to the employee. In the health area, this model of hiring is found, for example, in workers in the cleaning sector in a tertiary hospital, a work performed mostly by women, who are historically placed in lower working positions than men, where, in addition to less paid, they are still exposed to long hours, moral and sexual harassment and vulnerability. Inside hospitals, cleaning workers are subject to psychological burdens, such as subjective criteria for evaluating the work done, disputes between co-workers, social devaluation of work, and suffering due to the coexistence and confrontation with the suffering of patients. This context of precariousness, added to the organization of cleaning work within hospitals, can cause worker wear when considering the health-disease process that may materialize in mental illnesses. This proposal, which makes up larger research, aims to understand the perception of psychological burden and strain at work among cleaning workers in an outsourced hospital in a city in the interior of São Paulo. For this, through a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews will be conducted using a questionnaire with open questions. Direct observation of the work process will also be carried out, using a field notebook and data analysis will be guided by the thematic content analysis method.(AU)