A atenção à saúde dos trabalhadores nas instituições públicas de ensino superior no Brasil – uma abordagem exploratória das experiências em serviços

Abstract

This study describes the health and safety service model of eight state and federal higher education institutions in Brazil. The aim is to show an exploratory approach to the experiences in services, showing its technical staff, activities, which regulatory standards are used, whether such activities are sufficient or not to mitigate and/or eliminate accidents and obtain better working conditions. This research began in the second half of 2019 where the idea would be develop on the fieldwork through visits to the institutions in order to collect more detailed information, evidentiary documents and technical reports, normally not available on their websites, but at the beginning of 2020 the world was shaken by the pandemic of the new coronavirus. As consequence it was necessary to change the entire study strategy, as the institutions, as a precautionary measure, didn’t authorize the visits for this research, so all work was done through bibliographic research on the institutions websites. The main focus was to collect reasonable information to identify the service model, which actions were taken to improve health and safety conditions, which pre-established activities in the standards were met, and if the difficulties encountered are due to the absence of an organizational culture, insufficient number of professionals or lack of funds on the part of the institution for better investments in health and safety actions for workers. It is concluded that despite several initiatives that go beyond the mandatory regulatory standards, there are still many actions to be implemented, conclusion of technical reports that could support some actions in order to follow the lifework of the employees, since some of them are not concluded or totally developed. Such initiatives could reduce work accidents, health risks as well as early diagnosis.