Professional relations in health teams: constructionist relational alternative

The aim of this paper is to offer relational constructionist conceptual and theoretical resources to think relationships among health professionals from a perspective that understands the relational sphere as the locus of realities production. It is believed that providing an alternative vocabulary for the understanding of professional relationships within this field can provide interpretative repertoires and discourses for the co-creation of new realities in health care that do not meet a single tradition, a single model, and do not favor the adoption of practices already crystallized. The following conceptual resources are presented with its articulation with a relational constructionist practice in health care: multivocality, reflexivity, discursive practices and relational responsibility. To facilitate the development of this conversation, fictitious examples inspired by the everyday practice of health professionals are presented as triggers for the reflection of these resources as ways of thinking about the relationships among professionals. The understanding of people as embedded in multiple relationships invites to the use of this multiplicity in situations where the person’s idea about the other has been crystallized in negative ways. When professionals move from these stereotypical descriptions produced both by common sense and from the more individualistic tradition of scientific discourse, they are invited to see their team as carrying and embodying different selves, and different voices. This does not imply considering the professionals as unique or permanents, but as co-responsible of the performantory process of the group and its re-creation along the time.