Managing performance at the workplace: the use of medicines in highly demanding professions

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Hélder Raposo1, Noémia Lopes2, David Tavares3, Elsa Pegado1

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1Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, CIES-Iscte, Portugal; 2Instituto Universitário Egas Moniz (IUEM), Portugal; 3Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa (ESTeSL-IPL), Portugal

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In the current context of increase and diversification of the social uses of medicines, some of their new uses are those oriented towards the improvement or management of personal performance, in cognitive, corporal or relational terms. Assuming themselves as important performance aids, therapeutic resources are becoming more and more indispensable solutions, the more the rhythms, pressures and demands increase in the daily life of contemporary society. As a result, the use of medicines participates in new forms of adjustment to the multiple social pressures, which shows their use for non-therapeutic purposes, i.e., which go beyond the traditional scope of health and disease.

In this paper we focus on the social context of three professional groups - nurses, police officers and journalists - whose nature of work ties them to highly demanding, intense, and more immediate levels of performance. The main objectives are 1) to identify the pressure factors inherent to the nature of the work of each of these professional groups, and 2) to analyze the practices and social arrangements of adherence to different types of pharmaceutical and natural resources, in order to assess how these consumptions constitute performance management tools in response to work pressure factors.

In empirical terms, the results presented herein come from an ongoing study in Portugal, funded by Foudation for Science and Technology (PTDC/SOC/30734/2017), on medication and dietary supplement consumption for performance management. Data from a questionnaire survey (n=539) are mobilized, as well as information from 7 focus groups with the same groups (n=33).