Abstract
The present qualitative study was carried out in a university hospital, with the purpose of analyzing the work of nursing assistants and technicians, the most numerous category among health professionals and more prone to accidents in the workplace. This hospital has little more than 2.000 nurses. Two methods of analysis were used. 1) The Collective Analysis of Work (ACT - Análise Coletiva do Trabalho), consists of meetings with small groups of workers who explain their work. Four meetings were scheduled, and 34 participants, almost all of them females, attended. 2) The Model for Analysis and Prevention of Accidents (MAPA), a unique method for the occupational accidents analysis was held in one of the hospital clinics, with an injured worker that agreed to participate. The results revealed that work routines consist of a list of patients care tasks, characterized by a great variability in their daily work schedule. Many interruptions and overlapping tasks arise from urgent demands, besides issues in the organizational aspects of the situation that engendered the accident, as well as the fragility of the system of work safety in the hospital.
Work Accidents; Occupational Exposure to Biological Material; Collective Work Analysis; Accidents Analysis; Prevention