Atuação em oncologia: atitudes de uma equipe de saúde diante da morte

Abstract

Health professionals that works in oncology see themselves in a context of the human life fragility, since cancer is still considered the second largest cause of death in Brazil. In turn, these professionals are the fruits of a society that has death as taboo, a fact that creates implications in their professional practice, and in the emphasis that the academic training of health courses has given to the technical-scientific abilities frequently focusing on the curative character and health establishment of the individual over the study of the tanatology, making a large number of the professionals incapable to deal with death and / or the process of dying. Therefore, the present study has as general objective to understand the attitudes of a health team that acts in oncology facing the death of patients. As specific objectives, it aims to know the beliefs, feelings and actions of the professionals in front of the death of patients, their perceptions in relation to the preparation of the formation to face this experience, as well as to analyze if there are associations between their social skills and resilience with the attitudes in front of death. This is a cross-sectional, exploratory and correlational study of a qualitative and quantitative character, whose sampling was by convenience and composed of 38 health professionals (Nursing Technicians, Nursing, Medicine, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, Phonoaudiology, Nutrition, Dentistry, Psychology and Social Work) from a cancer hospital which is a reference for cancer treatment, located in the city of Muriaé/MG, Brazil, encompassing this specialties:. The following instruments were used: sociodemographic and professional questionnaire, semi-structured interview, Resilience Scale and Social Skills Inventory (ISS). The qualitative data were submitted to the Bardin Content Analysis and quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, a Pearson's correlation was also made. As a result, it was found that a large number of the professionals presented negative attitudes in contact with death and the process of dying of patients (42%) and it was verified that negative attitude in face of the death of patients was negatively correlated with social ability and resilience. Moreover, it was identified that 79% of the interviwees pointed out the unpreparedness of the training to face terminality. Concerning beliefs about patient death, most of the sample agreed that death means loss and anguish. About the items related to feelings on the death of patients, most of the interviewees agreed with the item "I feel deep sadness with the death of the patient". Finally, most of the participants agreed with the actions: "even being at home I still think about the clinical status of the patient" and "there are many moments when I approach myself to the patient and there are many moments when I avoid it." It is hoped that the findings of this study will contribute to future interventions based and aimed at the development of specific skills focused on better coping with terminality.