Resumen

PICARONI SOBRADO, N. Insights on physician′s work and professional identitygained through a study of the placement of ELAM physicians in Uruguay and Chile. Rev. urug. Antropología y Etnografía [online]. 2017, vol.2, n.1, pp.27-39. ISSN 2393-7068.

I return to an understanding of the job of a physician as an institutionalized social act in order to set the preservation/transformation of practices and knowledge-systems in relation to professional identity. Medical knowledge and identity are formed, transformed and expressed in specific sociocultural contexts, which are intrinsic to them. At ELAM in Cuba physicians acquire ways of behaving, assumptions and expectations of their role as well as “technical” aspects of medical knowledge, which differ significantly from the dominant ones in their present work environments. Simultaneously, these environments gradually inscribe themselves into their medical practice and identity.

Grounded on my ethnographic study of the placement of ELAM trained physicians in Uruguay and Chile, I conceptualize the placement process as an encounter of different ways of being and acting as a physician. In this encounter, professional identities may be reaffirmed, questioned and modified. The encounter itself express the fundamental social challenges, which in both cases, point out the unequal social stratification.

The coexistence of broad possibilities for the legitimation of the hegemonic ways of being and acting, which support social inequity, and deep gaps for critically confronting them, is a feature of physician’s work. Gaining awareness of the legitimation and control functions played by working as a physician on a daily base is a distressing, but necessary and critical, starting point; critical because it means an open-ended opportunity. The possible paths include to contribute to profound transformation of the hegemonic model.

Palabras clave : Work; professional Identity; training; physicians; ELAM.

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