[How professionals working in the Family Health Strategy program understand integrality of care]. / Integralidade da assistência na compreensão dos profissionais da estratégia saúde da família.

This study aims to analyze the integrality of assistance, a principle of the Single Health System (SUS), in the perspective of members of the Family Health team (doctors, dentists and nurses). This is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach, carried out with 47 professionals allotted in nine health care units in the city of Fortaleza, state of Ceará, Brazil. Data collection was done by semi-structured interviews, from August to September, 2008. Content analysis was used to organize and interpret the data. In the results professionals understood integrality as linked to the terms: holism, treatment in the three levels of care, interdisciplinarity and amplified health concept. The polysemy of integrality and its transversality as a SUS principle signal the need to reconsider the many meanings attributed to integrality, increasing the possibilities to discuss the it in the health practice scene.