The production of the common as a care strategy for complex users: a cartography with homeless women.

This paper discusses the low power of traditional care offers for so-called complex users in the health sector. It aims to show, from the narratives of two guiding-users, that professionals, services, and policies disregard the multiple singularities involved in the care and attempt to overlap their knowledge in asymmetrical relationships. They are often put at stake in their ability to generate interesting and more life-producing offers.

Contributions of Public Health to nursing practice.

Objective:: Analyze the perceptions of undergraduate nursing students about the contributions of public health to nursing practice in the Unified Health System.

Method:: Qualitative Descriptive Study. Data collection was carried out through semi-directed interviews with 15 students.

[Integrality in the health care perspective: an experience of the Unified Health System in Brazil].

Starting with a discussion of the biomedical model and its implications in the shaping of healthcare professionals and health practices, this article analyzes the concept of integrality as associated with the Unified Health System (SUS) [Sistema Único de Salud] in Brazil. Particular attention is paid to the disputes regarding the meaning of integrality and the ways of putting the concept into practice in everyday health care work. Based in a research study conducted at the national level, the authors suggest two aspects crucial to fostering integrality: an ethical-political project founded in the recognition that other people's lives are worthwhile and enriching; as well as the existence of additional spaces conducive to discovering diverse ways of producing life, in which integrality in health care is also possible and powerful.

Nursing practice in home care: an integrative literature review.

Objective:: analyze scientific production on nursing practice in home care.

Method:: integrative review employing databases LILACS, BDENF, IBECS, and MEDLINE. Studies in Spanish, English, and Portuguese were included, regardless of publishing date.

[Supply and demand in home health care].

The changes in the demographic and epidemiologic profiles of the Brazilian population and the need to rethink the health care model have led many countries like Brazil to consider Home Care (HC) as a care strategy. However, there is a gap between the supply of HC services, the demand for care and the health needs manifested by the population. Thus, this article analyzes scientific output regarding the status of the relation between supply, demand and the needs related to home health care.

Home care as change of the technical-assistance model.

Objective: To analyze home care practices of outpatient and hospital services and their constitution as a substitute healthcare network.

Methodological Procedures: A qualitative study was carried out using tracer methodology to analyze four outpatient home care services from the Municipal Health Department and one service from a philanthropic hospital in the municipality of Belo Horizonte, Southeastern Brazil, between 2005 and 2007. The following procedures were carried out: interviews with the home care services' managers and teams, analysis of documents and follow-up of cases, holding interviews with patients and caregivers.

[Home care in the Brazilian National Health System (SUS)].

Objectives: To assess home care programs implemented in three cities and to identify components indicating the integration of these programs into the reform of health care.

Methods: An exploratory descriptive study with a qualitative approach was carried out in the cities of Marília and Santos, state of São Paulo, and Londrina, state of Paraná, Brazil. Empirical data was obtained from interviews with five nurses and one social worker who worked in home care services, and through analysis of reports on these programs.