A study about the practice of buccal health in the Alagoinhas BA Family Health Program (2001-2004) with intent to analyze the arrangements that direct whole attention to buccal health: vinculum, reception, autonomy, responsibility and resolubility. The methodology is of qualitative nature in a historical-social perspective. The empirical material consists of interviews with health workers, managers and patients, the observing of the practice and documentary sources. The results show that the practice is organized through individual and collective actions built by a restrained demand. Attention is fragmented; there exists an excessive importance given to technique and specialization, whose axis is directed by the doctor-centered model with limited resolubility. Reception appears as a tense and conflicting relationship, however with a potentiality to build alternatives for change. Vinculum and autonomy cross link in the rescue of the worker-patient relationship and the encounter with their potentialities, which makes possible to level knowledge, narrow bonds and consolidate liking. To conclude, the practice of buccal health is full of conflicts and contradictions and is a potential tool for change in the work process, coexisting with the old (fragmentation) and the new (integrality) in an unfinished process still under construction.
Practice; Buccal health; Family Health Program; Integrality; Health program