Subjectivity, ethics and productivity in post-productive health restructuring

Abstract

The scope of this paper is to analyze the ethical problems generated by the modern stressor pattern of post-transformation productivity in productive restructuring in the health area. It is a qualitative study of the descriptive and exploratory type in which 30 professionals (nurses, doctors and dental surgeons) from a metropolitan region in the South of Brazil were interviewed, all of whom had prior experience in the public and private sectors. The results were analyzed through Discursive Textual Analysis. Capitalization is revealed as a major ethical problem in the series of new issues derived from the productivity-profitability imperative in health, due to the acritical incorporation of ethics that is restricted to the company's interests or to corporate-individual interests. The ethical problem of low professional commitment to the needs of the patient and of the social collective indicates the need to build a new engaged solidarity in order to increase the quality of public healthcare. Productivity targeted at individual and social needs/interests in the area of health requires a new self-managing and collective engagement of the subjects, supported by an institutional and ethical-political effort of group action, cooperation and solidarity.