The article deals with vocational training and skills required in the activity of nursing staff in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in conjunction with the 'body-self' and the health of these workers. It discusses the issue of jurisdiction in synergy with other issues relevant to her, as the ratio of service and suffering→pleasure working. The perspective of Ergology guides the investigative effort, incorporating other materials such as Zarifian and Dejours. At the methodological level, even taking the viewpoint of activity as synthetic operator, made visits to the NICU, survey and analysis of documents and operated with the device Meetings on the Work of the Community Extended Search. It was concluded that this collective assistants built a heritage of practical knowledge about their work and a basis minimally effective transmission of this heritage. Using the approach of 'work labor psychodynamics', it was emphasized that the character challenging work in the NICU has, which also involves coping with the suffering of mothers and relatives of newborns, including as a defense against his own suffering, avoiding a pathogenic way. It was also highlighted the importance of the possibility of renormatization, recentering of the environment in which they work, the extent that their values can be expressed. It was observed, finally, that there is a pressing demand for formal qualifications by these workers, which would provide, among other important benefits, greater social recognition, with positives effects to the health.
health work; NICU; psychic suffering; ergology; work labor psychodynamics