RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The topic right to refuse to do hazardous work/to be exposed to serious and imminent risks is herein presented as the central and fundamental axis on issues associated with workers' health and safety. OBJECTIVE: Investigating how the topic right to refuse to do hazardous work/be exposed to serious and imminent risks may be used as condition and strategy to manage work in the Surgical Center of a hospital. METHODS: The research methodology focused on establishing dialogue among Activity-centered Ergonomics (Ergonomic Workplace Analysis -EWA), Ergology, Action-Research and Ethnography. Samples were collected from March to September 2018 and comprised 120 hours of data, in total. The Surgical Center of the investigated hospital was the place of choice to conduct the study. Assistive Nurses accounting for managing and operating the entire sector were the analyzed population. RESULTS: The concept of refusal was expanded and (re)signified beyond the workers' health and safety perspective, since it was also linked to variables such as environment, quality of products/processes and social accountability. CONCLUSIONS: Refusal does not only mean not doing what is requested, but performing the task requested by other means and paths that are always guided by one's commitment to achieve the overall proposed productive outcomes. The right to refuse is more than a management tool, it is a broad and effective work organization strategy.
Assuntos
Ergonomia , Hospitais , Ergonomia/métodos , Humanos , Responsabilidade Social , Local de TrabalhoRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Risk management analysis at work makes it possible to find individual and collective experiences of recognition and hierarchization of risks in view of the specificities of labor situations and the complex and contradictory application of the right to refuse in health work, whose space and technique are still in a deep structural transformation. OBJECTIVE: To investigate how work organization impacts on the daily life of nursing care, in a general hospital surgical center, (un)enabling individual and collective risk management strategies in the context analyzed and how the right to refuse can be appropriate as a condition and strategy for work management. METHODS: Ergonomics (Work Ergonomic Analysis) was used to bring about the actual work activity and Ergology for epistemological deepening, whose research approach took place in a surgical center with four registered nurses. RESULTS: The results reveal that nursing work is invisible and that individual and collective strategies are used to manage the variability and constraints of the environment. The right to refuse is one of the competencies universe strategies conceived and built at work that ensure the realization of the results found. CONCLUSIONS: The right to refuse is full of meanings. Refusing does not mean "not doing", but also to do otherwise, by other means. It is beyond health and security and can be linked to other variables such as quality, environment, social responsibility.