The dentist ‘without high-speed instruments’: Oral health care in the SUS during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This study analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic context affected oral health care in the Unified Health System (SUS) in the state of São Paulo. It was carried out in two stages: an online structured questionnaire aimed at municipal health secretaries and open interviews with 33 managers, 19 health service coordinators, and 7 SUS workers, in two Health Regions. The results are presented and discussed in three moments—suspension of activities, reconfiguration of the dentist’s work during the pandemic, process of resuming care—and analyzed according to the concepts of collective oral health, bucallity, health care, health work process, interprofissionality, amplified clinic, comprehensive health care, and instituted-instituting process. The pandemic context emerges as an analytical moment for reorienting oral health care practices and allows us to reflect on the need to expand the clinic and the work of dental surgeons beyond the office and dental procedures.