Comprehensive health care: dilemmas and challenges in nursing

Objective: this article discusses comprehensive care as a guiding tenet of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), outlining health care practices, especially nursing, and the relationships built by subjects in action by means of different knowledge. Methods: this is a theoretical refl ection that aims to propose dimensions of analysis (access to services, reception, links, lines of care, accountability, and responsiveness), with an emphasis on the dilemmas and challenges of nursing. The proposed dimensions analyze the production of care and its political and technical aspects. Conclusion: care should be the focus of all health care work, bearing in mind that intervention for technological action of each profession goes beyond the core of isolated knowledge, as is the case of nursing, which is connected to other professional practices, and can peruse other territories that operate through relational technologies, entering into the world of the needs of users and families.