Instability and power: ethnography of hospital treatment for patients with tuberculosis in a reference center

Author(s)

Juliana Ramos Boldrin

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2020-02-18

Examining board members

Taniele Rui; Anna Catarina Morawska Vianna; Daniela Tonelli Manica

• Advisor: Taniele Rui

Abstract

This ethnographic composition focus on a body transformation that occurred with patients undergoing voluntary or compulsory long-term hospitalization for tuberculosis treatment at the Hospital Estadual Nestor Goulart Reis, an institution of the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) located in the city of Américo Brasiliense, in the São Paulo State countryside. In this hospital, which is a reference center for exclusively hospital care of tuberculosis, I conducted field work with health professionals - nurses, nursing technicians, social workers, laboratory technicians, nutritionists, physiotherapists, psychologists, doctors, occupational therapists -, and with patients. Long-term hospitalizations are targeted for patients who abandon and/or refuse outpatient care (the standard form of treatment for this disease since the 1980s) as a result of what appears in the hospital and in the documents as a social reason, that is, the situation street, drug use - especially crack -, and poverty, as vectors that may or may not be overlapping. In this context, I try to unravel how the treatment of tuberculosis produces a radical bodily transformation that starts from a weakened end-of-line body, considered unfit for public coexistence, and reaches a body stabilized in healing. To highlight this body transformation, I take two classifications that permeate the various dimensions of hospital care - the biomedical classifications of patients as positive, in the contagious state, and negative, in the non-contagious state - to describe the biological and social aspects of tuberculosis, as well as the ways in which the disease is handled clinically, spatially and temporally. With that, I try to contribute to the debates about care, limit situations and compulsory hospitalizations in the health field (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/07301-7 - From the bacillus to the diseased body: ethnography of the production of the disease in a reference center in the hospital treatment of tuberculosis
• Grantee: Juliana Ramos Boldrin
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master