Remembering the medical practices: How health workers narrate their most negative experiences

Abstract

People from different labor contexts and practices often narrate diverse memories about their past professional experiences. By analyzing professional memories, we can increase our understanding of how health professionals are able to integrate the diverse problems, which they may encounter within their profession. We have focused on the analyses of the most negative memories of a particular group of doctors related to their work experience. After interviewing 24 professionals of different specialties, their narratives were analyzed using the criteria of specificity, agency, and theme of the memory. Most memories were considered specific as they were vividly remembered with attention to detail. Men have more narratives linked to agency, while the majority of women develop narratives linked to communion. Furthermore, five clearly differentiated topics were observed regarding the professional’s degree of experience. A qualitative analysis of the memories of these professionals, as well as a description of the appropriation process of the discursive features is presented.