Doação renal: experiências de pessoas doadoras à luz da psicologia fenomenológica-existencial

Abstract

With the great achievements of biotechnology, there has been an increase in the number of kidney transplantations with live donors in Brazil. In the past decade, several studies focused in quantifying, analysing and describing the aspects of live kidney donation. Due to its complexity, it has conflicts in psychic, social, spiritual and existential aspects. The present study aims to describe the fantastic world of donors with the choice of donating a kidney and understand the possible choices of those who have performed the transplant. Meaning to describe the life of each donor, this is a phenomenologic qualitative research with an interview with six kidney donor adults living in São Paulo. The interviews were performed by questions followed by a trigger question considering the participant s answer and following its phenomenologic flow. For data analysis and synthesis, the following steps were put into practice: description, reduction and phenomenon interpretation. The lack of a psychological work on the donors was noticed before, during and after donation. Finally, this essay reveals being a kidney donor has new challenges and confrontations to save the life of a family member, in addition to the subjective aspects in the choices and decisions of being a donor