Planned discharge and the inter-professional relationship from the perspective of the nursing actions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

A qualitative-case study was carried out aimed at analyzing the interprofessional relationships generated by the planned discharge from the nursing actions’ perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study method was the participating observation by one nurse who works in a large SUS hospital in the city of São Paulo. The production of narratives and the micropolitics analysis resulted in two diverse visibility plans: beyond the planned discharge the anthropophagy of the technological arrangements for care and the ambivalence of the nursing staff in the production of interprofessional relationships; and the medical discharge and negotiated discharge: the intersecting with other professionals, with the families and with “real” life. The pandemic interrupted the multiprofessional visits and it was an analyzer of the interprofessional relationships. Wittingly, the nursing staff negotiates the discharges with physicians, who retain this power, and sets the team in motion using an elastic autonomy. The planned discharge alone was not able to guarantee a common interprofessional action plan, was not able to modify the constituted roles in the hospital, a situation that increased during the pandemic, but allowed the right setting aimed to increase the team’s professionalism.