Clients, citizens, patients: considerations about the multiple logics of care in health services

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to contribute to the discussion about care in health services, bringing to fore theoretical positions derived from discursive psychology in dialogue with actor-network theory. Based on the contributions of the philosopher Annemarie Mol, we propose that a diversity of logics of care is present in the interactions between professionals and people that seek health care. Mol makes a contrast between two ways of dealing with disease: the logic of care and the logic of choice, and, more specifically, two modalities of choice: the market version, where patients are considered as clients, and the civic version where patients are citizens that have rights. As heath practice is a heterogeneous network of actors, these different logics are mobilized at different moments positioning professionals and users sometimes as patients, as citizens and yet at other times as consumers of products and services. We conclude the essay with the provocation that we must learn to live with the polysemy of repertoires that circulate in the spaces we inhabit in our everyday lives and with the fluidity of positioning games: recognize from what person positions our interlocutors speak and in what positions we are placed.