Imagem da enfermeira no jornal O Estado de São Paulo

Abstract

This is a qualitative, documentary, exploratory research with an approach based on the process of historical investigation that aimed to analyze the image of the nurse published in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo from 1970 to 1999. We used all the data as source of data. editions published by the newspaper in the 30 years between 1970 and 1999, totaling 10,950 editions published in the studied time frame. Data collection was performed using web scraping techniques, a prominent technique for automated online data collection. We adopted, as an inclusion criterion, the mention of the terms "nurse" or "nurse", as well as both words in their respective plurals, at any time in the text. Thus, the corpus of analysis was composed of 2,528 news items. We identified an average of seven news per month about the nurse. However, in 90.3%, the nurse was only mentioned in the text, with no emphasis or relationship to the main news. In addition, most of the articles were published in the classified section, in the form of an article or column, which, by constitutivecharacteristic, brings the opinion of the author on a given topic. In the news in which he was the secondary or main figure, we identified characteristics that refer to the cognitive dimension of the image that were grouped in the analysis categories: Submission to the medical category; Dichotomous representations: from angels to demons; The devaluationof the nurse's work; The professional nurse; The nurse is aware of her political role. Wecan infer, based on the analyzed data, that despite the significant amount of news publishedon the topic during the analyzed period, this contributed little to the construction of the image of the nurse as a health professional in Brazilian society because most of the news only mentioned the nurse in the text or used the term to characterize an object or situation. In addition, the characteristics of nurses presented in the analyzed news refer to an image that is still romanticized and distant from the reality of the world of work experienced by nurses, reinforcing old stereotypes related to women and domestic work. We argue that itis necessary to open paths to strengthen the image of this professional as a worker who plays a central role in any health system. They are professionals who are present in almost all health services, on a continuous basis, every day of the week. They represent the link between the various health professionals in the conduct of care processes and increasingly occupy spaces in the management of health services and systems.