Abstract
The year is 2021. I have returned to the community where I have conducted my research since 2011, after a long period of absence caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. São Martinho is a German colony (colônia, in Portuguese) settled in southern Brazil. During my research, I was interested in the implementation of the Family Health Strategy, a primary health care policy that structures Brazilian health care policy. In local terms, one of the Strategy’s major proponents is the doctor responsible for one of the two family health teams present in the community. In the present article, I review of the implementation of the strategy, especially observing the effects of the social expectations formed in the doctor-patient relationship. For reasons that will be explored below, the notion of suffering has worked as a significant mediator in this relationship, in a complex of social expectations regarding self-conduct. This involves the doctor, in relation to his patients, but also the patients, in relation to the doctor.
Keywords:
Healthcare policy; Suffering; Moral life; Covid-19; German colonies of southern Brazil