A condição humana do Enfermeiro-docente da Universidade Federal de Pelotas: uma perspectiva arendtiana

Abstract

Nursing is an essential profession in health care, and nurse-teachers have a key role in training new human beings for the world. When their activities are analyzed, it is noticed too much involvement with teaching tasks, fragile interpersonal relationships, and the need to attend to different demands; all of these things contributes to their illness. Taking it in consideration, Hannah Arendt's (1958) in The Human Condition (1906-1975) makes it possible to analyze the activities carried out by nurse-teachers regarding their body care, professional work and participation in public and political spaces, in other words, referring to labor, to work and to action. This study aims to know and to understand the human condition of working as a nurse-teacher of the School of Nursing of the Federal University of Pelotas (FEn/UFPel). It is a qualitative research using Phenomenology as a methodological reference. The participants were twenty nurse-teachers, most of them are women between the ages of 29 and 62, married, with children, holding the Doctor's degree and working from one to 37 years in FEn / UFPel. Data collection was performed through the Phenomenological interview, and the Hermeneutics analysis was carried out according to the theoretical assumptions of Paul Ricoeur. The findings allowed presenting three categories regarding the Vita Active of the participants. The centrality of the Vita Active of the nurse-teacher is in the work, so it can be considered a "being of the manufacture" in the Public University, that is, a homo faber, when carrying out the tasks of teaching, learning, elaborating, organizing, and care. The results of their products are internalized by other human beings and are related to the search for a better labor for the user and to the seizure of specific contents of Nursing with quality by the students. The interpersonal relationships established by them, at the level of work, occur simultaneously through authority, hierarchy, command and obedience, and belong to a Network of Teaching and Care. The interviewees showed that they give priority to teaching activities instead of their own body and mind (labor), so there are bad changes when considering food, rest, physiological eliminations and physical activity, resulting in the carelessness of the labor itself and also in the removal of family life, favoring illness. In relation to action, they are aware of the responsibility for their own actions and decisions, and also for the other´s care. Citizenship is exercised inside public-political space of the Department, in the decision-making bodies of the UFPel, in the Association of Teachers (union) and in the Municipal Health Council, and they constitute a Political Relations Network, although they find it difficult to feel political agents inside and outside the University. All the three activities of Vita Active of Nursing-teachers need to be in balance so that they can have a full existence, with health, private life and a satisfactory work and they can use the public-political space to break the continuing practices that contribute to the carelessness of the labor, the scarce political life and the excessive dedication to the work.