The context of COVID-19 made it possible for professionals in the nursing category to be in a state of alert and emotional distress, and they were afraid to perform procedures on suspected or confirmed patients of COVID-19. Objective: To understand the fear-generating circumstances experienced by nursing professionals in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: Qualitative, exploratory study, developed in the five geographic regions of Brazil, through interviews in a virtual environment with 215 professionals, between April and December 2020. The data were processed by the IRaMuTeQ® software and analyzed in the light of the theoretical-philosophical framework of Phenomenological Sociology. Results: Most females mean 37.9 years old, married, white and mixed-race, nursing technicians (15.5%) and nurses (84.5%), working in public institutions. The textual corpus was divided by the software into 3 classes and subclasses: fear of personal and family life circumstances, related to the risk of self-contamination, transmission, loss of family members, co-workers and life itself; fear of exposure and social distancing in the face of the feeling of loneliness arising from social distancing, despite understanding that loneliness implies the absence of emotional connections with the people around, and not associated with physical distance; fear of subjective and objective working conditions, related to insecurity in the face of precarious working conditions, such as physical infrastructure, biosafety inputs, human resources, technical unpreparedness, lack of training and qualifications to take on highly complex care units, such as the needs to acquire and improve technical-scientific knowledge. Conclusion: The circumstances that generate fear are multiple and are processed in the physical, social, psychological and work dimensions, and it marks the lack of knowledge about the disease. The interpretations of the everyday world are based on a stock of previous experiences and transmitted by our predecessors, if they didn't have them (didn't live a pandemic) they can hardly deal with the current problem.
Objective: To analyze the social representations of nursing professionals residing in Brazil about the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of mental health. Method: qualitative study with 719 professionals from five geographic regions, using a virtual form. The software IRaMuTeQ®? was used to prepare the empirical material and Thematic Content Analysis, and interpretation in the light of the theoretical framework of Social Representations. Results: Nursing Technicians (20%), Nurses (47.2%), Midwives (0.5%), Professor-Research Nurses (15%), Graduate Nurses (13.4%), Specializing Nurses (13.4%) participated. 3.7%). The SR of nursing professionals are elaborated in the sphere of the precarious work process and in the naturalized experiences of the social construction of the profession, before and in the pandemic context, they are photographs of the reality of a category taken as a machine of a gear and not constituted of subjects of rights. A reality is revealed that has subtracted the possibility of them projecting plans for the future and opens space for the production of mental illness. It is essential to broaden the debate on the daily challenges of the profession so that it is possible to enhance the value of its work, which is avant-garde and its essentiality in health systems, which Nursing cannot ignore. Final Considerations: It was possible to understand that nursing professionals residing in Brazil had been performing their work in a precarious way before the Covid-19 pandemic, and in their practices did not produce major questions. With the pandemic and the risk of contamination, professionals began to look more closely at professional practice and were afraid of naturalized and simplified experiences in the face of not using personal protective equipment. Therefore, they understood that taking care of the other also implies taking care of themselves. This study also reveals that professionals need to re-signify the social construction of the profession and constitute a class consciousness in the face of the mode of production in which they are inserted.
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