ABSTRACT
Comprehensiveness can be considered as one of the most recurrent themes in the discussions about professional training in health, especially in the medical field. However, even in the face of these movements, we can observe confusion about the term, due to its polysemic character. Thus, the purpose of this study is to discuss the meanings of comprehensiveness based on a bibliographical retrieval in the existing literature, provoking epistemological, hermeneutic and practical reflections in the context of health education. It starts from the understanding that wholeness brings with it the perception of the complexity of our objects. Complex objects require plural looks. Dichotomies linked to the modern way of thinking, therefore, must be systematically abandoned. There is talk of Comprehensiveness as an overcoming of classical dichotomies in health. Overcoming dichotomies: 1. Individual and Collective; 2. Health and Disease; 3. Body and Mind; 4. Clinic and Public Health; 5. Theory and Practice. In other words, from the perspective of Comprehensiveness, health is considered as the result of multiple aspects of an individual’s life, and cannot be reduced to mere conceptual dyads, or even cause-and-effect relationships. This idea is based on the fact that from wholeness, when one speaks of health, it will never be alienated from the complexity of the life of subjects and their contingencies. On the other hand, completeness as the articulation of social and economic public policies based on the social Determination of the health-disease process in our context, besides being desirable, becomes fundamental. However, it must be recognized that because it is a counter-hegemonic view, it will suffer resistance, and perhaps it is this characteristic that allows the existence of the idea of Comprehensiveness as a utopian practice. Thus, comprehensiveness is expressed as an objective image, and more than that, it presents itself as guiding and guiding action in health, above all, as a continuous process of struggles and searches for transformations of our society.
Integrality in Health; Education Medical; Unified Health System; Public Health