Healthcare is a topic currently being dealt with by authors within the field of public health. These practices and studies reflect two ways of conceiving of care that are apparently antagonistic. They are sometimes based on instrumentality, with emphasis on procedures and technical interventions, and sometimes with a focusing on the relationship between healthcare professionals and healthcare service users. Based on critical reading of this collection of studies, the aim of the present study was, rather than contrasting the two groups identified, to link them in their complementarity through using Martin Heidegger's fundamental ontology. In Being and Time, Heidegger deconstructs the traditional ontology, to reconstruct a new ontology that seeks the fundamentals of human existence. Returning to these fundamentals can be seen to be essential for reconstructing healthcare and its practices.
Healthcare; Existential phenomenology; Public healthcare practices