EDITORIAL
A leadership for life
Jaime Breilh
Md. PhD. Health Area Director. Universidade Andina Simón Bolívar at Equador. Quito, Equador. jbreilh@uasb.edu.ec
We live a historical baseline in Latin America, with some potentialities to advance by a means of sovereign development, which is permanently threatened not only by external forces, but also by the persistence of a pragmatic and individualist culture. It is for that reason that, in the health field, and even in progress-favoring governments, the number of investment are not followed by changes in views or significant effects.
The historical processes that mark the material and spiritual bases of the era determine thoughts and practices, imposing the hegemony of a functional paradigm of the opponents (professional, adaptive and of fragmented subjectivity), connected to an administration that is efficient but also has true social consciousness.
In this setting, the great effort made by the graduate program (master's and doctorate) demands a special transcendence from public health nursing at USP, in accordance to the TIPESC model (acronyms in Portuguese for Teoria de intervenção práxica de enfermagem em saúde coletiva, meaning Theory of praxis intervention in collective health nursing). Its utmost importance refers to disputing against the opponents of functionalism: closing the path and proposing an anti-hegemonic view. In this way, the School of Nursing at this prestigious University reaffirms its regional leadership, constructing an autonomous paradigm, which is founded on critical consciousness and the education of nurses prepared not only to efficiently meet the conventional standards of the opponent professional care (knowledge, abilities and attitudes), but also to reach renovated forms of practice with autonomy (their own initiative), creativity, commitment and social responsibilities that include the collective dimensions of economic, cultural and political opponents.
This starting point in Brazilian nursing is produced precisely when we experience a global crisis that is much more that the conjectural ruin of large financial companies. The crises of the model of accelerated accumulation address health professions, as they show the absurdity of a system that is socially unjust, ecologically destructive and harmful, which is supported by an unfeasible model of civilization; a system of death, that feeds on life, reproducing itself as a monster that induces us towards irrational and pathogenic forms of living.
In this context, one should value the true dimension of courageous and unwearying work that impels the doctorate program in collective health nursing at University of São Paulo, placing academic excellence on the side of its people, to survey the theses of a good and healthy life; that which in Andean culture we refer to as sumak kawsay well being, based on an economy that is organized considering the preeminence of life and common good; where distribution offers to every individual the accessibility to a quota that makes that well living possible; where there is responsible consumption that is collectively agreed upon, based on a conscientious and balanced construction of needs, with no overindulgence or waste, and without causing and disproportion of present and future resources; definitely, a society that sustains a good biological and psychological life, with a possibility of longer longevity, ability to assimilate aggressions, with potentiality for full physical activity at all ages, enjoying pleasure and spirituality.
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
07 Oct 2010 -
Date of issue
Sept 2010
