Professionalism and identity negotiations of health professionals in the context of the Mais Médicos program

Abstract

How has the arrival of foreign health professionals to work mainly in health posts with Brazilian physicians caused tension in the discourses of professionalism in the context of the implementation and validity of the “Mais Médicos” program and what are the effects of this contact in their professional identities? Do different types of professional training within the same profession produce competitive discourses of professionalism when in the same work position? This paper analyzes how physicians build their own identities and negotiate their professionalism daily, how they have positioned themselves in this debate, and how they deal with the differentiation introduced by public policies. The methodology adopted combines qualitative techniques, direct observation and in-depth interviews with Brazilian and foreign professionals. Such fieldwork clarified the processes of negotiation related to identity-based discourses and how they appear and are disseminated in the discourse of professionals working in a municipality situated in the metropolitan region of São Paulo. The results show that there is no single, fixed meaning to professionalism, whose meaning is still discussed in order to legitimate subject identities and perspectives. This kind of negotiation is defined by their contextual experiences, but it is intertwined by the practice in family medicine as opposed to focal specializations.