This paper describes and analyzes the pain clinic's dynamics as a "complex product" of the biomedical therapy system, exploring the many discussions about the meaning of pain and the interdisciplinary collaboration in the therapeutic daily routines of two pain clinics, located in university hospitals in the cities Salvador and São Paulo. An ethnographic approach guided by interpretative anthropology was used to search for the description of singular and expressive situations of the pain clinic's dynamics (considered as a service, established within Biomedicine, intended for care of chronic pain). Such situations express tensions and solutions created from the confrontation of the chronic pain as a complex object that imposes flexibility to all. This ethnography focuses on four therapeutic spaces: the waiting-room, the hall, the medical consultation and the clinical case discussion. The resulting description enlightens the multiple voices on pain and interdisciplinary collaboration in the clinic's daily routines. The directions of circulation within therapeutic spaces guided this reflection around the limits and possibilities of the establishment and operation of this service.
Chronic pain; pain clinic; interdisciplinary collaboration; heteroglossia