Social representations about religion and spirituality

Objective: to identify the social representations about the concepts of spirituality and religion of of health teachers. Method: exploratory and descriptive study, based on a qualitative approach. 25 subjects participated in it. The following instruments were used to collect data: questionnaire to identify the profile; questionnaire of free association, whose inducing words were religion and spirituality, and an interview based on the scale FICA (Puchalski, 2006). Results: the representations about religion and spirituality, for professors, are forged around the faith in God and it gives them meaning and purpose to deal with the challenges of personal and professional living. Conclusion: there are still barriers that need to be overcome with a view to a comprehensive care. For this, it is essential to incorporate spirituality in the process in the curricula of health courses.