Netnography: Methodics in Pandemic Covid-19 from a Human Digital Ecosystem of Physicians

Introduction: The global social disruption generated by the Covid-19 pandemic produced an immeasurable hecatomb in society. Especially in the health system, even when the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization developed Biosafety actions for health workers exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Inquiring into this occupational reality of physicians was improbable, since Venezuela followed social confinement as a preventive mechanism to preserve the health of the population; this context placed physicians at a crossroads between epidemiological chaos, social uncertainty, and inhospitable conditions of safety, hygiene, and health at work. Therefore, the research in confinement was proposed to migrate from a face-to-face methodology to the digital environment, to reflect on the meanings and transcendence that physicians attributed to medical praxis and working conditions in the Covid-19 pandemic. Methodology: The study was developed in the digital ecosystem, where physicians from different specialties participated in challenging heuristic processes that shaped the netnographic methodology. This methodology merged the hybridization of offline and online society as a socio-health continuum, unveiling phenomena and complexities. Results: The netnographic methodology was guided by research focused on concrete problems; the methodological procedure and the findings are exposed as lifelines. The categories and subcategories represent palpitating traces of online sociability, a product of an ecosophical hermeneutics of dimensions: guild, medical praxis, social, safety—hygiene—occupational and psychosocial health. Conclusion: This study paradigmatically legitimizes the suitability of netnography in contributing to the construction of scientific knowledge in occupational safety, hygiene and health.