Clinic and oral health at SUS

innovating and (re)constructing care pathways

Abstract

The article provides analyses of work processes and the use of care technologies and competencies in interpersonal and bonding relationships. In a multicentric research on expanded clinic and oral health at SUS, we used the clinical method of the expanded clinic comprising users and the health team. This text aims to discuss the clinical practice in oral health and patient-centered health care, based on the theoretical frameworks of buccality, welcoming, and health care technologies. It brings reflections on one of the study settings, with the participation of four researchers and eight trainees (dentistry students), having as a locus the oral health clinic of a primary care service of São Paulo/SP. The activities took place along 13 months (2014 and 2015), serving 135 users. A total of 375 dental procedures were performed, with an average of 1.54 returns per patient and 6.38 interventions per user in 2014, and 7.25 in 2015. Most users had their oral health needs met in one single return. Researchers and trainees produced field diaries with impressions and perceptions about care, and this article brings analyses from a narrative within the scope of Discourse Analysis. By resignifying the practices, we assume new possibilities for care, within the singularity of each case and with light, communication and welcoming/bonding technologies, as well as processes that integrate the being, the thinking, the doing and the being. It is emphasized the potential of health practices constituted in the becoming, in the resumption of the clinic as a space for the production of subjectivities, of production of the self, pointing to the (re)construction of the field of signs and symptoms, appreciating differences and discontinuities, and inviting everyone to think and discuss the hegemonic clinical practices of Dentistry, from the training to the health services.