Health and labour process in service activities. Psychosocial risks at work in a Private Medicine Clinic

This article addresses the renewed occupational health problems that arise as a result of productive restructuring, the new forms of workforce management applied and the transition to a service economy. Thus, in the current scenario, in addition to the traditional occupational risks (physical, chemical, biological, technological), other less known risks emerge and affect the psychosocial health of workers with equal forcefulness. The objective of this article is to analyse the Psychosocial Risks at Work to which the workers of a Private Medicine Clinic are exposed, focusing specifically on two of them that proved to be central during the investigation: emotional demands and the social relationships at work. The data was collected through a survey applied to a sample of workers and through interviews held with different key informants of the institution under study (union authorities, delegates, head of human resources). The results show that the workers of the Clinic effectively face high emotional demands, on two main aspects: on the one hand, due to the permanent task of containing patients and relatives in distress and pain, and on the other hand, due to the necessity of containing the negative reactions of the public (anger, aggression). Regarding the social relations at work, it was found at the Clinic the existence of demanding and possibly conflicting work relationships between workers and superiors, derived from the high work demands and also by the historical asymmetries between the professional categories.