The power of the bond for healthcare production: What guiding users teach us

Abstract

This article discusses the findings of a research on production of care in healthcare networks in a municipality in the South of Brazil, regarding the power of the bond as a tool-concept to reorganize work processes of healthcare teams. The methodology was a cartographic approach that consisted in following the experiences of three “guiding users” in order to provide researchers with a perspective that is closer to that of users. We considered mutual acknowledgment and symmetric relationships, associated with a shift in the positions of recognized knowledge, as an ethical condition to the development of bonds. We argue that the construction of bonds is a powerful strategy to transform daily healthcare practices, based on an ethical-esthetic-political project that focuses on users’ demands and health needs, taking into account their singularities, and established through symmetric relationships.