Feelings and perceptions of health staff in front of the terminally ill patient

Abstract

The care given to terminally ill patients by health staff, properly indicated in evidences of literature, shows the great difficulties that those professionals have in dealing with the death. This study intends to show how those professionals define and experience terminally ill patients. Thus, a qualitative approach was applied to ethnographic research through observations and semi-structured interviews were used in the hematology-oncology and infectology departments of a public hospital. Results attest to the difficulties on the part of health staffs in handling and defining terminally ill patients, as well as the difficult task of rendering those patiens aware of their terminal condition. That said, one realizes the need for a direct-contact approach with such health staffs intending to provide them time for reflection and understanding which favor some restraint in their emotions brought on in face of death situations.