POWER RELATIONS AND DECISION: CONFLICTS BETWEEN PHYSICIANS AND HOSPITAL MANAGERS

Abstract

The hospitals hold tension originated from professional and group nature. Their directive and clinic bodies are composed by physicians who usually have difficult to accept discipline rules and to listen to the recommendations mainly when they come from the hospital managers. This research aims at analyzing how the hospital managers located in the city of Belo Horizonte perceive the power relations between their professional category and the doctors who own hospitals and their consequences. Nine speeches from hospital managers with at least four years of experience in hospital management were collected and analyzed through the qualitative methodology. The research identified that the hospital is a place of medical discipline in which the physicians control the daily operations of the other employees and determine the kind of behavior these employees should have. The employees who were interviewed resent the lack of autonomy to manage and they believe it harms the procedures and the quality of the services rendered. They complain mainly about the lack of information and the lack of possibility to take part in the strategic decisions. They admit that the relationship with the doctors who own the hospital is surrounded by conflicts because they usually ignore the issues brought up by the managers and insist on the social class difference as a way to make their opinions prevail. The main characteristic of the conflicts is about the superior perception from the physicians toward the other professionals.