Work and education in health in Brazil: trends in scientific output between 1990-2010

The scope of this article is to analyze the characteristics of scientific literature on work and education in health in Brazil from 1990 to 2010. A synthetic study was conducted from abstracts published in Brazilian journal articles selected from the SCIELO and LILACS databases. Five hundred and thirty-two articles were selected, categorized according to their origin, year of publication, theme, and type of study. The publication of these scientific articles increased during the period analyzed, particularly from 2007 onwards. The main areas researched were education and training of health professionals, and the majority of works in these areas examine curriculum reform, methods of learning and teaching, and teaching in-service experiences. Besides these issues, others questions were addressed such as the labor market configuration and trends in health, and characteristics of the work process in several areas, like primary healthcare units. It was also observed that there are only a small number of studies related to policy, planning and management of work in public and private health institutions, as well as a scarcity of studies presenting reflections on theoretical and conceptual aspects of this theme.