WORK MANAGEMENT IN HEALTHCARE: MEANING AND USE OF EXPRESSION IN THE BRAZILIAN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Abstract The expression ‘work management in healthcare’ began to be used in Brazil after the 12a National Conference of Health, replacing ‘human resource’. The aim was analyze the meanings attributed to the use of the term ‘work management in healthcare’ based on the Brazilian historical context. This research developed a scoping review in the Lilacs database, between 1990 and 2010. Among 436 eligible studies, 34 were included. These publications presented numerical growth especially after the 3rd National Conference of Work Management and Education in Healthcare at 2006. The content was synthetized in five main topics: conceptualizing of work management in healthcare, policy formulation, and participation of workers in the work process, labor precarization and new challenges. Despite the consensus about the complexity of the expression, distinct aspects are explored by the authors depending of political, social and economic contexts during the construction of thought. The theoretical discussions should support changes on practices of management and on culture of production modeling, but practical changes are scarce, generating a question that was not completely answered: does work management in healthcare represent a simple terminology exchange or paradigm shift?