title: [Hospital leaflets and the dynamics of constructing their meanings: the perspective of health professionals].
abstract: Based on interviews in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro, the authors analyze strategies, interests, assumptions, and concerns among producers of patient information leaflets on infectious diseases. Most such publications followed a linear communications model, according to which health messages produce a sole and single effect on their audience. Visual communications are seen as a field of knowledge over which physicians have no "command", but which raises great expectations on their part, principally in light of the limits of written language for an illiterate patient population. The most frequent concerns relate to the "adequacy of the language" (a denotative, non-semantic function of language) and on the increase in "dissemination". Leaflets are generally linked to the professional experience of providing health care, but the lack of pertinent research prior to the production of such publications leads to simplifications and generalizations concerning the patients' most common doubts and questions, reinforcing the stereotyping of the clientele based on their lacks and needs. In two exceptional leaflets, interaction with the clientele appears and expands the relationship between the health care professionals and the values and decisions made in distinct sociocultural contexts.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Epidemiologia e Vigilância em Saúde, Centro de Pesquisas Hospital Evandro Chagas, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 21045-900, Brasil.
authors.forename: Brani
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rozemberg
authors.forename: Ana Paula Penna
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: da Silva
authors.forename: Paulo Roberto
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Vasconcellos-Silva
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001957:Broadsides as Topic; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000523:psychology*; D003142:Communication; D006739:Hospital Administration; D006801:Humans; D008389:Marketing of Health Services; D009042:Motivation; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D010358:Patient Participation; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D013664:Teaching Materials / Q000592:standards