Sense of Work of the Hospital Psychologist

Abstract

The hospital psychologist is a privileged professional within the health team, as he has the resources to deal with various psychological issues of patients and their families. Thus, starting from the concept of this professional's sense of work, which is defined as the workers' understanding of what they do at work as well as the relevance of what they actually perform, an attempt was made to investigate this professional. This research aimed to analyze the meanings of the work of hospital psychologists. For this, a qualitative study was developed. The methodology adopted was a free response from a questionnaire with the eliciting question about the meanings of activity in hospital psychology: "What is the meaning of work for you?". Twenty-one psychologists from a public hospital in Recife/PE participated in the research. The main results point to six thematic categories of meaning produced through the eliciting question, which are "the structure of psychological care", "the nature of the clinic in the hospital context", "professional identification and gratification", "emotional support /care for others and social relevance", "characteristics of work in hospital psychology" and "the ethical-political dimension".