[Stress at the emergency service: possibilities and limits of new managerial strategies]

The current study with health professionals from an emergency service intended to identify stress-precipitating factors and to evidence possible managerial and political alternatives in order to minimize the intensity of stress symptoms. The data were collected through a semi-structured interview and, later on, complemented by observation. As found out, the working environment is an agent that causes stress, resulting from daily circumstances faced through factors from the working environment as well as from subjective ones. Neither factors from the context and from the working environment nor anti-stress care performed by the workers were observed. Considering the local reality, possibilities and limits are presented for the implementation and direction of political strategies addressed to the higher administration and for the development of institutional and personal strategies that allow coping stress.