Tiempo y ritual en la organización del cuidado médico

Abstract

In this paper, I focuse on several issues that are central to the anthropologycal analysis of the health care developed in an institution of the City of Buenos Aires’ primary care level, especifically a Community-based Health Care Center. I examine the central place held by time in the social organization of health care, as it is revealed by the observation of the organization of the institution’s work schedule or time table, and the patients’ waiting time. I consider that there is a difference in the temporality level between the medical care institutions and the world outside, and that the passage from one time to the other is produced by several forms of ritualized behaviour. On the inside, the registration and assignment of turns appears as the institution’s main activity, one that is analyzed here as another ritualized form that organizes social interaction according to the Health Care Center’s norms.