Configuration of power relations in physicians and nurses' professional practices

to analyze the configuration of power relations constituted in and by the knowledge and daily practices of physicians and nurses in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

qualitative study in which data were collected through interviews with physicians and nurses from an ICU of a hospital in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. A semi-structured script was used. Data were analyzed through discourse analysis in a Foucaultian perspective.

three categories were developed - Professional Identity: self-recognition in the profession; Discipline: individualizing attitudes or collective need?; and Circularity of knowledge and power in the constitution of daily practices. Final considerations: the identity, discipline and circulation of power are connected in a continuous movement of subjectivation of the subject, which, in turn, uses discourse as a persuasion strategy to modify the position taken over in different situations thereby causing the circulation of power.