Meanings and Values of Being at Risk: Collecting the Narratives of Hypertensive Patients

This paper aims to account for some issues related to research process on experiences and

narratives of patients with hypertension disease followed in Portuguese Primary Health Care. Qualitative research methodologies were used: interviews, using the McGill Illness Narrative Interview model (Groleau, Young & Kirmaryer, 2006) and direct observation of the consultation.

Interviews were conducted with 41 persons with hypertension.

The study aimed to assess the representations and practices of hypertensive patients and how chronically ill patients related to their doctors, nurses and nutrition and medical recommendations.

The experiences reported by hypertensive patients reveal how, in practice, there is no linearity in the behaviors and how decisions to actions are played in relation to learning and knowledge sediment from previous experiences, habits, emotions and needs. The affective action is marked by the custom, that is, the conducts guided by emotional reasons or by the habit are of extreme importance in the behaviors of the hypertensive ones. These types of actions are often called irrational, but instead are based on a practical knowledge of conducting everyday activities and applying differentiated criteria of relevance. Consequently, if from the clinical point of view certain actions or behaviors of hypertensive patients seem to lack rationality, from the point of view of people such behaviors, considering the different priorities at play, but also the different capacities of choices, habits and experiences, still Which are marked by ambiguities and anxieties, are a space of power and coherence.