That was a review study that aimed to analyze the interpretations that authors of dissertations and thesis about the meanings expressed by health workers, about the relations of subsistence with the job, in the organizational culture of public hospitals in Brazil. Data were extracted from from dissertations and theses in the period from 2002 to 2006. The theoretical methodological reference laid in the interpretive anthropology by Clifford Geertz. The results point that the subsistence relations conduct to alienation from work. The payment generates economic non satisfaction that pry the need to have other jobs. The work stability feeds the disengagement and actions that stimulates the transgression of standards and help the own governs in public hospitals in Brazil.
Public hospitals; Organizational culture; Personnel administration, hospital; Hospital administration