The characteristics of the Unified Health System (SUS) and the Family Healthcare Strategy (ESF) bring them close to complex thought, a term that refers to the theoretical and epistemological framework rather than to an adjective describing phenomena with multiple features. Indications of inadequacy in the training of healthcare professionals, for them to work within family healthcare, led to a proposal to survey the training of these professionals for the expanded approach to healthcare implicated in SUS/ESF. Focus groups among undergraduate nursing, medical and dental students at the Federal University of Amazonas were conducted, with analysis from a hermeneutic-dialectic perspective. The data indicated that the training for these three professions was reductionist and biomedical, focusing on individual work rather than on multi-professional teamwork. This is an inadequate framework for SUS/ESF, for which professional action focusing on the complexity of the socioeconomic and anthropological context of the system's users is recommended.
Training of healthcare human resources; Primary healthcare; Complexity theory
