RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: French law of 4 March 2002 instituted health democracy, making health system users a real partner and active stakeholder in the healthcare system. This role of health system users must be taken into account particularly in health priority areas in order to reduce social inequalities in health. In the context of primary care, multidisciplinary clinics would appear to be ideal places to develop the expression of health democracy. OBJECTIVE: Identify the health expectations of the users of the Villejean clinic (Brittany, France) situated in a health priority area. METHOD: Qualitative study based on individual and group interviews, conducted with Villejean health system users. Transcripts were analysed thematically by a grounded theory approach. RESULTS: Five group interviews and twenty-one individual interviews were conducted in 49 users. The interviewees described high expectations in terms of a quality relationship with healthcare professionals, who were considered to be real educative partners. Users also formulated high expectations in relation to facilitated access to cares, especially concerning financial aspects. CONCLUSION: Identification of users' expectations constitutes the first step in developing a primary care health democracy, in which access to care is a major priority. New multidisciplinary clinic projects must take these users' expectations into account. The creation of user committees could allow the citizen-users' views to be really taken into account.
