Social practices in the medicalization and humanization of prenatal care

The study's main objective is to analyze how discourses of medicalization and humanization reconnect in primary healthcare and shape prenatal care for pregnant women provided by family health teams. This was a single and integrated case study with multiple analytical units and a qualitative approach. A total of 17 focus groups were performed, in which 47 health professionals were heard (14 physicians, 19 nurses, and 14 dentists), members of 17 family health teams in 16 municipalities in the South of Brazil. The empirical material was analyzed from the perspective of Foucauldian discourse analysis. The family health teams, adopting general practice, reported difficulties in conducting prenatal care, evoking and bolstering the discourse of obstetric medicalization that their practice should supposedly offset. The discourse officially adopted by humanization, prioritized in the generalist model of prenatal care, continues to function as a complementary discourse to that of medicalization and specialization, which prevails in the practices reported by the teams. The emphasis on humanized care for pregnant women tests the limits of professional territories and assumes the renegotiation of competencies. Efforts at collaboration between the family health teams and obstetricians have not proved very successful in this specific case.