Fear when caring: reflections on a permanent education experience in Covid-19 times

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the support actions for health teams in a small municipality in the State of Rio de Janeiro in confronting Covid-19, in a university-municipality partnership. The cartographic approach of the micropolitics of work and health care was the reference that guided the work. Among other activities, permanent education in health workshops mediated by the Internet and coordinated by the researchers were carried out with the assistance teams and managers of the basic network and other services of the municipal health network. In these meetings, problem situations were identified, and among them emerged the fear of being contaminated, contaminating others, and of dying, interfering negatively in daily work. These fears were mapped, their concrete implications and the powers and tools for their confronting; the current dimension of fear was discussed, affection as fragility but also as potency, the possible passage from hope to a active hope, and collective intuition-intelligence as a stake.