A vida após a alta / Life after discharge

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

IBICT - Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

19/12/2005

RESUMO

This thesis discusses life after discharge from the hospital, using the ethnography of the experience of a group of families, as they cared for dependent family members. It was carried out between August 2001 and July 2005 in Juiz de Fora, MG. The focus of the investigation was the familys daily life with a member who required specialized health care after receiving highly complex care. The objective was to answer the question: how does the family care, at home, for a member who still needs care after being discharged from the hospital? We adopted Geertzs (1989) ethnography, which allowed us, through interpretive analysis of the webs of meanings learned through observance-contact with the subjects, an understanding of how the phenomenon (care) is evidenced, and is transformed into experience in the relationships that arise within and outside of the family. Identification of the subject families began with observation of hospital admittances at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Juiz de Fora Federal University Hospital during the second semester of 2003, followed by observation in the wards, and later, at the homes. Of 137 patients admitted to the ICU that semester, 59 died, 12 were transferred to other hospitals in the same city, as they required technology not offered by the University Hospital, and 66 were released under the category of improved. Of these, we observed only 12 cases, all residing in the city of Juiz de Fora, who fall under the same care culture and who received the same organizational standard and care flow in the local health system. Of these, one family stood out as the principal subject, due to repetition of events that were significant for the main issue of this study. We also used data from 5 of the other observed patients. The data were stored in a LOGOS qualitative data bank. Among the results we found were the priority given to physical care, the dependence on specialized SUS health services and the alterations in the organization and functioning of the family, with redefinition of roles to adapt to the reality of living with a sick family member. Two phenomena related to the experience of caring by the families stand out: individualization in the family, which seems to influence the clinical approach (individualized) by health professionals, and a conception of the family as a collective subject, Bourdieu (1998), as a possibility for planning collective action. The suffering that was observed through continuous contact of the subjects with anguish as they sought health care in the SUS, in the health care institutions, demonstrated the uncare that this group of citizens is exposed to under the present health care system. The families experiences in dealing with a variety of types of care, including technical care, led to a network of contacts with people outside of the family, to meet the patients needs. In spite of dependence on technology, technological knowledge, and the restrictions on them, there was evidence of a kind of autonomy on the part of the subjects in terms of health care practice within the intra-family space an in the micro-sociological surroundings. In the Health Care System, the families first preference was to seek help at hospitals, then at secondary reference units, and lastly, from the Family Health Teams. They sought help from the Family Health Teams because they represented an obligatory part of the initial flow of users in the local SUS, they guarantee the supply of medicine, offer services of a bureaucratic nature, such as bills of health and doctors opinions to present to judges, as well as requests and forwarding for laboratory exams.

ASSUNTO(S)

cuidado cuidar família etnografia alta hospitalar assistência domiciliar saude coletiva health care care family ethnography hospital discharge home care

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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