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Establishing a good therapeutic alliance is essential in the treatment of people with anorexia or bulimia nervosa. However, healthcare providers consider sustaining the professional-patient bond challenging, as many patients do not acknowledge their illnesses and need for professional help. This study aimed to understand the meanings the team specialized in eating disorders (ED) assigned to the professionalpatient bond. This descriptive-exploratory study adopted the Clinical-Qualitative Method and Bonding Psychoanalysis as the theoretical framework. Twenty-three professionals participated in this study. They were members of a healthcare team at a specialized ED outpatient clinic at a university hospital. Data were collected through semi-directed interviews applied online and submitted to Reflexive Thematic Analysis organized into three categories: (1) the centrality of the therapeutic relationship and how to enhance it to favor the treatment; (2) Difficulty in maintaining the professional-patient bond: an exhausting and demanding exercise; (3) Responding to the challenges imposed on the therapeutic relationship: perseverance and tolerance to frustration. Even though the participants recognize difficulties in maintaining a therapeutic relationship, they value it as a structuring axis of care and a factor that determines a successful therapeutic process. Empathy appears as a catalyzing vector of the therapeutic relationship, and the professionals perceive that they are also transformed in the patient's treatment journey. Additionally, the healthcare providers need to improve their resources to strengthen the therapeutic potential of the bond and overcome the challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic study aimed to describe the experience of health professionals from a multiprofessional team with the transition to online care during the COVID-19 pandemic in an outpatient service of assistance in eating disorders of a university hospital in the interior of São Paulo. Ethnographic method was employed, with Geertz's Interpretive Theory of Culture as the theoretical framework. The research corpus was built based on participant observation and the researcher's diary entries, collected in a field notebook during the weekly meetings of the multiprofessional team that took place between July and December 2021. Exhaustive readings of the material were performed, based on an analysis procedure that made it possible to identify units of meaning that gave rise to the themes. The results were organized into two thematic axes: (1) Perceived changes in the relationship with service users, in which aspects related to the concern of professionals with the adherence of patients to the remote modality, the challenges of the new ways of producing care, and the quality of professionalpatient-family communication are highlighted; (2) Experiences of a multidisciplinary team that had to reinvent itself during the pandemic, a thematic axis that addresses the efforts to maintain motivation and group cohesion among the health staff in the transition to care mediated by digital technology and the challenges faced to preserve, as much as possible, the feeling of closeness and welcome during online care. It is concluded that the pandemic impacted in several ways the bond of health professionals with their work and with patients and families, which reinforces the importance of potentiating the exchanges provided by the virtual environment in times of uncertainty and mandatory withdrawal. It is necessary to consider both the favoring and limiting factors of the transition to care mediated by the use of technology, pondering its effects on the quality of the bond and the effectiveness of treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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