Configuration of power relations in physicians and nurses’ professional practices

OBJECTIVE: 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). METHOD: 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. RESULTS: 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.