Paper short abstract:

This work is the result of an ethnographic research conducted in the National Health System of the city of Rio Tinto-PB, Northeast of Brazil, following a team from the Family Health Program, responsible for four locations in the rural area.

Paper long abstract:

This work is the result of an ethnographic research conducted in the National Health System of the city of Rio Tinto-PB, Northeast of Brazil, following a team from the Family Health Program, responsible for four locations in the rural area. We found that, despite the principles of the assistencial model proposed in the 1988 Constitution, the service is crossed by values related to the local symbolic system, intervening in interactions, offered care and potential of intervention on quality of life. We noted that the locations relate differently with the health team, ranging between two extremes: an informality that prevails and the other with intense formality in relations between professionals and users. Another aspect corresponds to the distinctions between professionals on staff and difficulties in reference to the local system, and another assigned to localities, considering: diseases, conceptions of health and access to the so-called "modernity" and its implications for health, food, entertainment.

Keywords: health system; business/user relations; health/disease, symbolic local systems