Heróis usam máscara?: representações sociais de profissionais do SUS durante a pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract

In recent decades, we have been following the dismantling of public health policies in Brazil, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, in this scenario, speeches emerged that portrayed SUS professionals as heroic figures. With this in mind, this study's object of analysis was Care Work in public health, particularly, the predominant social representations regarding it in the pandemic situation. We aimed to carry out a critical investigation and analysis on the Public Health System (SUS) professionals representations as heroines and heroes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on publications on online social networks and journalistic media, in order to understand their assumptions and implications for the performance of these professionals, as well for the constitution of their subjectivities. This is a qualitative, interpretative-comprehensive study, whose database was documentary – public domain publications in journalistic media and online social networks, from February 2020 to January 2022. We used the Theory of Social Representations as a reference for data processing and analysis. The corpus of analysis was composed of 522 publications: 55 from Globo; 46 from Folha de São Paulo; 130 from Estado de São Paulo; 15 of Portal Terra; 38 from Rede HumanizaSUS and 238 from Twitter. This data set resulted in 6 analytical categories: (1) Heroism as recognition and reification; (2) Adversities arising from COVID-19 for SUS workers; (3) (Ir)Responsibilities of the federal government in the spread of COVID-19; (4) The hero behind the mask: ethical-political suffering of SUS workers in the COVID-19 pandemic; (5) SUS as a potency despite it all; (6) The light at the end of the tunnel: Responses to the absurd (mis)Government. We discuss the ideological function exercised by speeches that represent SUS workers as heroines/heroes, since they are produced in a context of precariousness of health work and institutional abandonment on the part of the responsible authorities, especially, the federal government under Bolsonaro’s administration. Recovering the historical trajectory and political project from which our universal health system was established, seeking to reflect on its future, we conclude that it is necessary to adopt recognition strategies for its professionals anchored in materiality and collective processes.