Home Care within the Unified Health System: challenges and potentialities

ABSTRACT

This study aims to know the scientific production about Home Care in Brazil, discussing the challenges and potentialities of this type of care in the scope of the Unified Health System (SUS). This is an integrative review in electronic health databases, in the period between 2006 and 2017, whose final sample included 23 articles. Three categories have emerged from the analysis: ‘Substitutive potential of Home Care and articulation with the network’; ‘The user and his/her family in Home Care’; ‘Satisfaction of users and the relationship with the team’. The analysis points out as the main potential of Home Care the configuration as a substitute care network, the bond and the horizontal relations between team, users and family. The main challenges are the fragmentation of care and the lack of articulation with the other points of the care network. Home Care is a unique space of health and can be a powerful space for reinventing relationships between users, caregivers and teams, questioning the hegemonic ways of producing care.

KEYWORDS
Home nursing; Home care services; Public health policy; Caregivers; Unified Health System