The ELSA-Brasil (Estudo Longitudinal de Saúde do Adulto – Brazilian Longitudinal Study for Adult Health) is a cohort study composed of 15,105 adults followed up in order to assess the development of chronic diseases, especially diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Its size, multicenter nature and the diversity of measurements required effective and efficient mechanisms of quality assurance and control. The main quality assurance activities (those developed before data collection) were: careful selection of research instruments, centralized training and certification, pretesting and […]

This paper introduces concept and typology to teamwork as well as criteria to identify types of teams. The concept and the typology were developed based on the literature and research on multi-professional work in healthcare, based in the theory of studies on work process in healthcare and in the theory of communicative action. According to this theoretical proposition, teamwork is a form of collective work characterized by a reciprocal relationship between technical interventions and the interaction of agents. The proposed […]

Diagnosis of the situation of pre-natal services in the area of the 5th Administrative Region of the State of São Paulo was undertaken. The model built by CIARI et al and some items of quantitative evaluation to analyse these services were used and the general conlusion was the maternal health attention situation was bad. An increase in the cost benefit relation was shown. The items concerning money inversion were satisfactory but the service performance was not suitable due to lack […]

Sugestions are presented on the organization of a manual for Public Health Nursing services at the local level. The methodology describes the procedures envolved in each stage including: analysis of the situation through data collection and their interpretation in order to determine the content of the manual; determination of categories of information needed, including specification and correction; organization giving details concerning the struture of the total content, the ordering of information according to each category, selection of required material resources […]

Based on an enquiry regarding public health laboratories undertaken in the Health State Departments thoughout Brazil which took into account mainly the available exams, staff and plants, the Author presents and analyses the central public health laboratories’ capacity in the country and puts forward suggestions for the improvement of the system.

As the Manicômio Judiciário (a Judiciary Mental Health Hospital) is a hospital-prison it could be subordinated either to the State Health Department or to the Department of Justice. In order to reach a sound decision regarding this issue, structural and human resource comparisons as between the Manicômio Judiciário on one side and the Araraquara Prison on the other are provided. Comparisons between the status of the human resources of the Manicômio Judiciário in 1981 and 1984 and between the wages […]

OBJECTIVE: The study examines the implications for shiftworkers of applying different numbers of teams in the organization of shiftwork. METHODS: The participating operators came from five different companies applying continuous shift rotation systems. The companies shared the same product organization and a common corporate culture belonging to the same multinational company. Each company had a shift system consisting of four, five or six teams, with the proportion of shifts outside day work decreasing as the number of teams increased. Questionnaire […]