Analyses aiming to understand how subjects deal with processes of health/disease usually emphasize the ways in which they introduce their concrete experiences into abstract evaluative frames, in order to define actions to be implemented. This being stated, this paper questions the efficiency of such approaches in understanding the experiences of the patients of Brazilian's public health system. The analyses are undertaken based on the results of research made in a public health institution of the Brazilian Federal District, in which therapeutic itineraries of its patients were reconstituted. The research indicated that their trajectories are crossed by several orders of uncertainties. Considering their relevance and the fact that in any way it impedes the promotion of their medical treatment, the paper discusses how patients deal with these uncertainties and which relationships are established with the ensemble of their experiences. It is then argued that their uncertainties do not come from the inherent characteristics of the patients but from the relations they establish with (1) the medical knowledge and (2) the institutional organizations in which this knowledge is accomplished by the public health institutions. Further it shows that the patients' assessments, classifications etc. are not mainly directed to the processes of health/disease in the strict sense, but to the mechanisms that allow more successful relationships with the institutional organizations through which they receive their treatment.
experiences of health; uncertainties; patients of the Brazilian public health system
