Percepção da atuação profissional do nutricionista em pediatria

Abstract

The nutritionist in any of his fields of expertise is considered as a health professional seeking for the promotion and maintenance of health in both individual and collective plans. In the hospital industry this professional performs different attributions, among them the nutritional assistance, considered to be one of the most relevant aspects for the quality improvement of the treatment of patients. The participation and integration of the nutritionist in a multi professional team has been recommended in the health industry in order to fully meet the patients’ needs. The scope of the present work is to study the professional performance perception of a Pediatric Nutritionist in comparison to other professionals and the nutrition team. This is a qualitative study, carried out with 13 nutritionists of both genders, all of them acting in pediatric clinics of five public hospitals in the city of São Paulo. The method applied was the so-called Collective Subject Discourse (CSD), achieved through interviews which were fully recorded and tape-scripted, identifying the Key Expressions (KE) with the core meaning of the testimonials and the Central Ideas (CI), which validated the Key Expressions. The results showed that 85% of the interviewees are females being predominantly up to 30 years old, with no more than five years of professional experience, and the same time in relation to Pediatrics. The social representations concerning the perception of the professional performance resulted in 48 Key Expressions compiled in 10 Central Ideas and their respective discourse synthesis. As for the perception of the professional performance, regarding the medical and nursing team, 50% of the interviewees reported having a satisfying relationship with this group. The majority of the people assessed to have a positive relation with the nutrition team and evaluated them to be good professionals. Conclusion: The nutritionists who were interviewed reported to inter-relate in a satisfactory way with medical and nursing professionals. They consider them to be good professionals and have a positive relationship with the nutrition team. A satisfying interaction between professionals helps both the work and the attention given to the hospitalized patients.