A Água nossa de cada dia: percepção, uso e predisposições comportamentais de alunos do ensino médio de Natal, Rio Grande do Norte

Although water scarcity is recognized as one of the main world-wide problems to be faced by human kind, ecologically unsustainable patterns of behavior still persist. Thus, the objective of this study was to analyze pro-environmental behavior related to water, as well as meanings associated to it by high school students of Federal Center of Technological Education of Rio Grande do Norte, in Natal. The convenience sample was composed by 315 students, 146 women and 169 men, who answered a questionnaire about use and perception of water, containing indicators of proenvironmentalism, environmental care, sustainable development, time perspective, externalities and collectivism, besides socio-demographic items. According to participants, water is synonymous of life, even though the relationship they present with it is ambiguous, much more functional than ecological; they consider it a finite resource, an indispensable life patrimony, however there was no coherence between such conceptions and the self-reported behaviors of water use. Results indicated three important predictors of pro-environmental behavior: sex of respondent, New Ecological Paradigm Scale and telephone/address left for eventual contact to participate in future environmental campaigns. They may be used in additional studies for theoretical development, or to assist in the planning of programs of environmental education, aimed at the inhibition of the effects of a culture of consumption and of an utilitarian perception of water, extending individual and collective efforts towards the preservation of common resources as water

O trabalho dos assistentes sociais nos hospitais universitários Onofre Lopes (HUOL) e Hospital Ana Bezerra (HUAB) da UFRN: os desafios da formação permanente

This paper discusses the process of training social workers in the environment of University Hospitals- UH s. These hospitals provide space for professional education aiming to achieve a critical and purposeful professional performance. As environments for training, producing knowledge and providing essential services to the public, these hospitals require all members of the healthcare team to have a continued education. Understanding that training has to be a priority and conceived as constant pursuit for update through the interaction of Teaching, Researching and EPO ( Education and Public Outreach). These dimensions provide approximations and domain of theoretical and methodological, giving special importance to understanding the social reality, a sine qua non condition to the work of the Social Service professional. The main goal of the research was to comprehend how the continuous professional education of the social worker occurs and it s relation with the articulations involving Teaching, Researching and EPO, as significant elements for the job of the social workers in the Hospital Universitário Ana Bezerra and Hospital Universitário Onofre Lopes/UFRN. The research was conducted through a literature review, documentary and field inquiries with semistructured interviews including the group of 09 (nine) social workers from the aforementioned hospitals, taking as a reference the quantitative and qualitative approach to analyze mediations that stand between the subject and the social context. The results indicate that social workers in these university hospitals have their insertion beyond the care provided to patients in performance in the areas of education through preceptorship to undergraduate students and social work residents in and extension projects with low insertion in area of research. We note that there is a recognition of the importance of a continuous education, indicating that the qualification of social worker is essential in transforming their daily professional practice to better monitor, critically explain the peculiarities of public health in its everyday showing of how unequally access is provided to the users of the public health system

O Serviço Social e a exclusão/inclusão social dos portadores de HIV/AIDS :demandas e desafios nos hospitais públicos

This research presents the labors developed by the Social Service unto socially excluded HIV/Aids positives at public hospitals in Rio Grande do Norte (RN). It purposes to identify and to analyze the demands brought by the holder onto the Social Service professional as well as the challenges the latter face to minister to the former. It privileges, from the methodological viewpoint, the qualitative and quantitative analysis with the application of questionnaires, direct observation, semi-structured interviews and bibliographic references. Data were collected from 12 (twelve) social assistants who work at Giselda Trigueiro Hospital in Natal (7) and Rafael Fernandes Hospital in Mossoró (5). The central hypothesis that guided this study is that the social inclusion/exclusion process experienced by the HIV/Aids positive on society implies a demand for the Social Service that is inserted in the public health context (specially in HIV-referred public hospitals), whose agents, however, when attempting to answer those demands, meet obstacles due to both the precariousness of public health services and the social complexity that concerns the HIV/Aids epidemic. Results point out that, de facto, the HIV/Aids epidemic, because of the social exclusion/inclusion process to which the holder is subject results a demand for the social agents at hospitals. Demands rise principally from the patient s life condition, considering the increasing pauperization in the epidemic context. As to what it is concerned, social assistants, responding to the needs, come across concrete twofold challenges: the illness in itself, for all social, negative aspects that make part of quotidian life of holders; and the precarious state of the public health service in RN State, since that working conditions are unsatisfactory