Abstract

MATHIAS, Paolla Pinheiro; MATTOS, Amana Rocha  and  IZIDORO-PINTO, Maria Cecília. The crossroads of the hospital scene: voices of black nurses and a decolonial praxis. Rev. SBPH [online]. 2025, vol.28, n.spe1, e003.  Epub Nov 14, 2025. ISSN 1516-0858.  https://doi.org/10.57167/rev-sbph.2025.v28.esp_1.906.

Intersectional feminisms were at the heart of the research. Here, we understand the need to problematize discrimination and oppression based on gender, race, class, and professional category as coexisting, aligning with the concept of coloniality, which underpins the structurality of these oppressions in multidisciplinary hospital work. The objective was to analyze Black nurses‘ perceptions of hierarchies of knowledge and power in light of the hegemony of medical knowledge, using the methodological framework of Martins and Benzaquen. Seven nursing professionals working in hospital units of the Unified Health System of the State of Rio de Janeiro were interviewed. The data obtained in this research were presented along the axes of analysis: coloniality and decoloniality in mental health: experiences of Black nurses in a psychiatric hospital; „The pandemic came and we had to adapt to the system!“: working relationships among multidisciplinary teams during the Covid-19 pandemic; „I have a reputation for being a bit of a transgressor!“: Black women‘s protagonism in the face of hierarchies of knowledge in the hospital. These findings revealed markers of coloniality such as Eurocentrism, authoritarianism, identities that fix/subjugate, and the hegemony of a specific knowledge. In addition, there were episodes of institutional racism against psychiatric patients, intersecting with gender discrimination and the stigma of madness. Black nursing workers were agents of a decolonial praxis, promoting collective articulations to form interdisciplinary support networks and confront the hegemony of a specific knowledge. With this study, we call on hospital psychologists to engage ethically and politically with a decolonial praxis in the hospital context.

Keywords : Social psychology; Health psychology; Hospital psychology.

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