Histórias do alto risco: uma prática de letramento profissional promovida pelo apoio psicológico hospitalar

Abstract

The research presented originated in 2016, when we became aware of a project called “Histórias do Alto Risco” (Stories of High Risk), developed at the Maternidade Januário Cicco in Natal/RN by the hospital's psychological support team. The project aimed to assist pregnant patients during hospitalization due to gestational complications, with the goal of documenting their experiences and emotions in diaries, either during hospitalization or in their daily lives prior to hospitalization. In light of this, the research aimed to describe the “Histórias do Alto Risco” project developed by the psychological support team at the Maternidade Escola Januário Cicco/Natal-RN in its care for pregnant women, based on the accounts of the professionals responsible for its implementation. The research also aimed to map the literacy practices that permeate the project, characterize the records in the “Histórias do Alto Risco” notebooks as health literacy practices, and highlight their impacts for the pregnant women, based on the perspectives of those who proposed the project. To do so, we relied on the voices represented by the professionals responsible for the project.The investigation is situated in the field of Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 2006; Kleiman; Vianna; De Grando, 2019), and consists of a field research type (Gil, 2008), with a qualitative approach to data (Bogdan; Biklen, 1994). Two professionals, who are part of the psychological support team at the maternity hospital, participated in the research, and their responses to questionnaires and semi-structured interviews form the corpus of analysis.The theoretical framework is based on discussions from Literacy Studies as a social practice (Kleiman, 1995; 2014; Oliveira, 2007), health literacy (Paz, 2008), as well as studies on the therapeutic aspects of writing (Sexton; Pennebaker, 2009), among others. The results of the study point to the importance of the literacy practices in the project, which, when combined with medical/hospital treatment, significantly helped women navigate the hospitalization process with more ease and awareness. The significance of this work lies in its contribution to academic discussions about literacy practices developed in health institutional settings, emphasizing the situated, multiple, identity-forming, and empowering nature of literacies.