Hospital psychology and multidisciplinary teams

Abstract

Hospital psychology has been constructing its history step by step, being that two decades ago, the actuation of the psychologist in hospital institutions was not regularized as a broad and necessary psychological praxis. In general hospitals, the therapeutic listening of users and their relatives is essential. This article aims to point out some aspects of the psychologist insertion in health teams, as well as his or her professional praxis in the context of the hospital. For that, six general hospital psychologists from Porto Alegre were interviewed aiming to understand how the work of psychology is connected to the work of other professionals in a multidisciplinary health team. The psychologists bring out many aspects of their professional actuation that pervaded the construction of the present study. Among them, we could point out the following aspects: the power relations among professionals of multidisciplinary teams, the concept of health and the discourse of humanization of attention to health. The relations among health professionals of diverse disciplines and team work are fundamental for a humanized service to general hospitals users. On the other hand, the concepts of health and humanization towards attention to health are established in different ways and are almost always attached to the professional disciplinary area. The health teams say that in some cases, only medic help is not enough for the treatment to be successful: the human being is much more than a physical body, and therefore, integral service to health is unquestionable.