A EDUCAÇÃO PARA A MORTE NO HOSPITAL COMO ESTRATÉGIA DE HUMANIZAÇÃO EM SAÚDE – O OLHAR DE PROFISSIONAIS DA UTI NEONATAL

Abstract

Death is a difficult subject, especially if we consider the current historical moment where is avoided and silenced. Despite the unwillingness to discuss it, death is present in all human contexts, in particular, in the hospital environment where it affects patients, family members and professionals. In this paper, I present the proposal of a pilot project of Education for Death, aimed at professionals of direct assistance to newborns in Neonatal UTI (UTIN), the intensive care unit. The objective that guides the development of this work is to evaluate the validity of this type of educational practice as a way of humanization in health service. Given the abovementioned, a new methodology of health education was needed to be invented, and it revealed the phenomenon of death for professionals in health department. The methodological course contemplates the theoretical fundaments, based on a careful selection of bibliographic sources about the main concepts related to the subject and the contributions used as a theoretical and methodological inspiration, namely, Phenomenology and Research-Action. The program in question consisted of four meetings with a group of ten professionals from different categories, where it was sought to problematize the fact of being a professional facing the death in the UTIN. The thorough analysis of meetings and the incessant theoretical revision enables us to confirm the validity of this type of intervention as a humanization strategy in health service for professionals who are listened to and being understood with their existential issues and practical dilemmas. In the same way, this humanization concerns the patients and their relatives who can be benefited by a closer and more sensitive assistance to their healthy needs. The analysis is a set of categories here defined as "units of meaning and sense", which are the following: a) Senses and feelings of death - from lack of meaning to the full meaning of the existence; b) The professional-health-being - issues : training, gender and professional categories; c) Relationship between spirituality / religiosity /death, and the search for meaning; d) The death of the baby - specificities of an unnatural phenomenon; e) Speaking of Death in the Neonatal ICU - the experience of a program of Education for Death. The analysis and theoretical discussion of these units allows us to affirm that the methodology developed has proved to be an effective educational resource in the health field, knowing that it favors the constitution of solidarity exchanges between the actors involved in the process, here understood as rights-beings.