Ciência & Saúde Coletiva ISSN: 1413-8123 [email protected] Associação Brasileira de Pós-Graduação em Saúde Coletiva Brasil Scochi, Maria José; Martins Mishima, Silvana; Peduzzi, Marina Maria Cecília Puntel de Almeida: builder of bridges between Nursing and Public Health in Brazil Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, vol. 20, núm. 12, diciembre, 2015, pp. 3891-3896 Associação Brasileira de Pós-Graduação em Saúde Coletiva Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=63043240026 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative DOI: 10.1590/1413-812320152012.19272015 3891 Maria Cecília Puntel de Almeida: builder of bridges COLLE between Nursing and Public Health in Brazil C TIVE HEALT H BUILDERS Maria José Scochi 1 Silvana Martins Mishima 2 Marina Peduzzi 3 Abstract Professor Maria Cecília Puntel de Al- meida (1944-2009) built a professional and aca- demic career of which the main feature was her attempt to create and strengthen the interface be- tween Nursing and Public Health in Brazil. From the beginning of her career she recognized this con- nection and understood the complexity of health problems and peoples’ needs when seeking care. Her commitment took the form of both scientific output and also her contributions to the various fields in which she worked. As well as her contribu- tion to the concept of the work process of nursing, she contributed to thinking on health practices and multi-professional training in the construction of a differentiated body of knowledge, which she approached from the perspective of the struggle for democracy in health and understanding of this as a right of citizenship. 1 Departamento de Key words Nursing, Public health, Work process, Enfermagem, Centro Training, Maria Cecília Puntel de Almeida de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Estadual de Maringá. Av. Colombo 5790, Zona 7. 87020-900 Maringá PR Brasil. [email protected] 2 Departamento de Enfermagem Materno- Infantil e Saúde Pública, Escola de Enfermagem de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo (USP). 3 Departamento de Orientação Profissional, Escola de Enfermagem, USP. 3892 et al. Scochi MJ Scochi The quest for training in public health widened, in a multi-professional and interdisci- plinary approach – aspects which are so neces- In the professional and academic career of Maria sary to the field of health. In a way, this question Cecília Puntel de Almeida (1944-2009) we see her was a strong feature of her work as a nurse, teach- activity in two fields: public health, and nursing. er and researcher, present in her scientific output She contributed an important leadership, whose and in her activity as mentor of professionals in effects remain today, since the impacts of her the postgraduate environment. contributions to Brazilian nursing are still pres- Her activity in this master’s degree course was ent and remain up-to-date. This article, however, in a contrary direction to the scientific output highlights the interface in which she operated, relating to Brazilian nursing at the time, which and which led to theoretical and conceptual con- tended to give exaggerated value to internal as- tributions on public health being a strong com- pects of the profession, such as techniques ap- ponent of her academic output. plied in care, preparation of care models, evalua- 3 She was affectionately known by all those tion of bio-psychosocial care, etc. who knew her as Professor Cecília, and began her Soon after completion of her master’s de- activity in health when still very young, starting gree, she entered EERP–USP as a teacher, where the nursing course at the Ribeirão Preto Nursing she dedicated her full time to teaching, research School of São Paulo University (EERP–USP) at and extension courses – seeking to put the tri- the age of 17. partite model that still characterizes USP today Graduating in 1963, she opted to enter the into practice. She was a professor there for four world of work immediately, by the path of public decades, until she retired in 2008, for reasons of health. She was hired as a nurse at the Vila Lobato health. Community Social Medical Center, a health unit She recognized the close interface between linked at the time to the Childcare Departments public health and nursing from the beginning of – pediatrics, gynecology and obstetrics, and pre- her career, which both reflected her comprehen- ventive medicine – of the Ribeirão Preto Medical sion of the complexity of the problems of health Faculty of USP (FMRP–USP) and the Hospital and of peoples’ needs in seeking healthcare, and das Clínicas of the Ribeirão Preto Medical Fac- also helped expand her understanding of these ulty (HCFMRP–USP). The purpose of this unit factors. Both her scientific output and her contri- was to provide maternal and child care and also butions in the various areas in which she worked to work in the community – thus it had different show recognition that “health problems go be- features from the hospital environment, and this yond the barriers and frontiers of the professions, seems to have been a factor which set off her de- and care is involved in a complexity that calls out sire to continue her training in the field of public for a diversity of knowledges and actions”3. health. In the 1970s, as a professor at EERP–USP, Her master’s degree, in 1966 and 1967 at the she took part, together with other teachers of National School of Public Health, of the Oswaldo EERP–USP, in a seminar of the Pan American Cruz Foundation (ENSP/Fiocruz), culminated Health Organization (PAHO – or Organização in her dissertation “Public health nursing in the Pan-Americana da Saúde: OPAS), in Cali, Co- Health Unit1”, given when she was still a public lombia, coordinated by Juan Cezar Garcia and health nurse at HCFMRP–USP. In her Memo- Olga Verderese4. That seminar sought to develop randum for the competition for the Professor- the plan for establishment of Nursing Research ship of EERP/USP she recorded that “The fact Centers in Latin America, and was planned and of having done her master’s degree at another held under strong influence of Juan Cesar, a pi- unit, outside Ribeirão Preto and with other pub- oneer of the social sciences in health in Latin lic health professionals [...] enabled me to start America, who recognized the limits of positivism professional activity with a more general view in dealing with problems of health and the need of the problems of health and the importance of to introduce new methodologies and theoretical a multidisciplinary approach for treating these frameworks that would make it possible to relate problems”2,3. the social structures to the social problems, mak- 5 Certainly the work experience allied to her ing progress in a historical-dialectic outlook. interaction, while doing her master’s degree, with In the pioneer study of medical education in other professionals in a context of strong political Latin America (1972), Juan Cesar “adopted a the- mobilization in the country enabled her horizons oretical approach that made it possible to analyze of activity and comprehension of teamwork to be medical education not only as an isolated pro- 3893 Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 20(12):3891-3896, 2015 20(12):3891-3896, Coletiva, & Saúde Ciência cess, but as a historical process, subordinated to State, in 1979, and Ricardo Bruno to collaborate the predominantly economic structure in society in NUPESCO, a group that she coordinated until where it develops6. The same focus was adopt- she retired. ed, in 1974, in the study that the author made in partnership with Olga Verderese, on nursing in Latin America, with a focus on the prestige of the Debate on the process of work profession and its relationships with structural and the production of knowledge factors. On returning from the Seminar in Cali, Ce- In 1984, Cecília presented her thesis entitled cília organized a study group on the theoretical “Study of the knowledge of nursing and its prac- and methodological approaches of the social sci- tical dimension” (Estudo do saber de enfermagem ences and their application to the field of health e sua dimensão prática)7, published as a book in and nursing, continuing the frame of reference 1986 and republished in 19898. This production with which she had had contact. She invited the was a landmark for Brazilian nursing, both in re- sociologist Graciete Borges Silva, with whom lation to the theoretical and methodological sit- she had worked in a long partnership at EERP– uation, and also in the possibility that it brought USP, to give support to the group’s studies. This with it of recognition of a group of complex would later be the origin of the movement to questions that characterize the area. The study constitute nursing research groups, in Brazil, adopted a Marxist frame of reference, thus en- such as NUPESCO – the Public health Research abling an approach to nursing as a social practice and Study Center (Núcleo de Pesquisa e Estudos consisting of the process of division of labor in em Saúde Coletiva) of EERP–USP, which for a health and in a manner articulated to the other long time had the benefit of the work of Ricardo practices and to the method of organization of Bruno Mendes Gonçalves. This movement also capitalist society. influenced the constitution of the CEPEn – the By studying Brazilian nursing as work, Ce- Nursing Research Center (Centro de Pesquisa em cília centered, as principle of focus of investiga- Enfermagem), connected to the Brazilian Nursing tion, on its instruments, especially knowledge in Association (Associação Brasileira de Enferma- nursing, which led her to explore the training of gem – ABEn), and indirectly the conception and nurses in the country, from the early part of the creation of the Nursing Research Development 20th century – what contents were transmitted in Support Center of PAHO/WHO, headquartered professional training, in relation to insertion into 5 8 at EERP–USP .