The scope of this research was to analyze how the practice of health education occurs in the informal user-worker relationship, and the strategies used for its implementation in routine primary care. It is a qualitative study conducted with two Family Health teams and the data was collected through observation and semi-structured interviews and assessed using discourse analysis. Health education in the informality of professional-user relations occurs in everyday conversations and guidance, and permeates the various issues involving the needs of users. Workers present educational strategies that occur in a non-structured manner, some of which portray a differentiated way of implementing educational practice, though most of these are restricted to the transfer of information, in which employees seek to transfer/inform reinforcing their attitude of imposition and control of know-how they consider to be right. It is necessary to rethink and enhance health education as labor technology, which reveals different processes for action in health, reorienting the practice into meaningful learning, which promotes change among users, workers, and in the current healthcare model.
Health education; Family health; Human resources in health