THE VOCATIONAL TRAINING OF HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF SEMIOTICS

Abstract

This essay proposes a theoretical framework for the education and training of healthcare professionals based on Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatic philosophy, more specifically, on his classification of the kinds of reasoning, his conception of diagram and his description of the mental process as a triadic relation among sign, object and interpretant (semiosis). Studies show that communication between health professionals and assisted people often happens in a decontextualized manner due to the emphasis that these professionals attribute to the accomplishment of scientific-technical procedures and predetermined protocols. Therefore, this essay proposes: 1. An analysis of the process of communication between health professionals and people requiring care, which is understood as a process guided by the action of the sign, or semiosis; 2. the elaboration of a care/treatment plan as a projective diagrammatic process that includes multiple variables and requires the aid of abductive, deductive and inductive reasoning to efficiently accomplish its purpose.