REPRESENTAÇÕES SOCIAIS DE SAÚDE-DOENÇA DE PROFESSORES UNIVERSITÁRIOS DA ÁREA DE SAÚDE HUMANA EM ÉPOCA DE PANDEMIA DA COVID-19

Abstract

With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, measures were adopted to contain and prevent the virus, impacting different areas of life and society. Teachers had to reinvent themselves due to the challenges encountered with the implementation of Emergency Remote Teaching and with reconciling professional life with the new daily life, domestic and family tasks. These challenges led to a crisis scenario, in aspects of mental and physical health of these professionals, especially those in the health area. Such professionals go through an educational training process, in which teachers act directly, not only in the educational process, but also in the formation of opinions, generating general influences. Therefore, it is necessary to verify the changes in the health/illness perspectives of these teachers in the scenario of the covid-19 pandemic, through the Theory of Social Representations, which is related to principles socially shared between individuals that govern social practices, ways of thinking and acting and the objects that permeate them. The objective of this work is to investigate the social representations of university professors in the area of human health about health and illness during a pandemic. A qualitative approach was used in the research carried out. Initially, information circulated in regional media between 2020-2021 about the impact of the pandemic in the region was collected. Next, interviews took place with 11 professors who work in higher education in the area of human health at an HEI in the interior of the state of Minas Gerais, who agreed to participate in the research, constituting the sample for the present study. The semi structured interviews took place using the Google Meet tool, in common agreement with the participants. For data characterization and analysis, Microsoft Excel and IRaMuTeQ software were used. The final results obtained through this research are directed towards the fact that teachers' social representations of health and illness are aligned around physical, emotional and social well-being, so that when there is balance in such factors, there will be health and, in its imbalance, disease. This representation of health considered only the external aspects of the individual, placing him as the sole controller of his health, disregarding the internal aspects, which are not under his control, such as genetics. On the other hand, the representations of illness were permeated, on the one hand, by considering the external aspects of the individual and, on the other hand, by considering the internal aspects of the individual. Therefore, their Social Representations consist of a simplification of reality, which had as its starting point the reified universe, however, reconstructed, based on beliefs, values, attitudes and historical and social context of teachers. Thus, it is understood that the covid-19 pandemic contributed to the (re)construction of Social Representations of teachers in the area of human health about health and illness. When asked about the influence of the media on their perceptions, in times of pandemic, despite its importance in disseminating information, teachers were categorically against the way in which the covid-19 pandemic was approached by the media, in which negativity and sensationalism prevailed. However, it was found that teachers used the circumstance as an opportunity to add to the importance of health, with reflections on the topic. Finally, it was concluded that the final results obtained through this study have the potential to contribute to the scientific community, as it explores a contemporary topic that has not yet been investigated by other researchers.