Links between psychology and humanized work in health: understanding, training and practices

Abstract

From the context of the National Humanization Policy (NHP) of the Brazilian Unified Health System, this study had the objective of identifying the main contributions and the theoretical-methodological relations of Psychology for humanized practices in health, in the Brazilian literature. For that, complete articles, published in Portuguese since 2008, were systematically identified and analyzed in the main database of the area. After the analysis procedures, the results gathered the publications, from psychology and related areas, into three main categories: (a) professional training, (b) perceptions, experiences and feelings of professionals and (c) characteristics, practices and representations of the activity. Most of the articles in the three categories criticize the traditional perspectives of health and call for more training resources for health professionals, who have found difficulties in their fields of professional action to reach the models recommended by NHP. From the point of view of psychology, we identified the weight of phenomena such as empathy and the appreciation of the feelings and emotions of patients and families as the central point of the humanized practice. The authors identified gaps and suggested new fields for research and possibilities for intervention in the area.