The judicialization of health contextualizes in the practical dimension of health care professionals social representations

Abstract

The judicialization of health is an expression increasingly present in Brazil, materialized mainly by court orders for the performance of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, consultations, hospitalizations and dispensation of medical and surgical supplies. The study aims to analyze and discuss the contents of the social representations of judicialization contextualized in the practical dimension of the social representations of health care professionals. This is a qualitative study, based on the Theory of Social Representations, conducted with 40 professionals at a university hospital and the center of regulation of procedures and beds in the city of Rio de Janeiro, with 40 semi-structured interviews, that were analyzed through thematic-categorial content analysis, instrumentalized by NVivo software, resulting in 725 units of analysis, distributed in 34 themes. We identified that health care professionals have a negative position towards the reality imposed by the judicialization, however  they recognize this recourse as necessary in face of the Brazilian public health crisis. Considering the social representation as a determinant of practices, it was concluded that social representations arising from this study are in the final stages of consolidation and may contribute to change the practices of health professionals in search for improvements in the users’ direct care, embodying a greater challenge in the sense of promoting democracy and citizenship.