A espiritualidade frente ao processo de final de vida de um ente querido: reflexões sobre os significados atribuídos pelo familiar

Abstract

Receiving the diagnosis of a potentially fatal disease represents a crisis for patients and their families, affecting different life domains and promoting a re-signification of belief systems that are shaken by the threat to the continuity of life. Palliative care emerged as an alternative to the traditional curative model of health, aiming at relieving physical pain and giving comfort to emotional, social and spiritual suffering. This new approach ratified the inclusion of spirituality in the concept of health established by the World Health Organization, indicating the need to consider the spiritual dimension in view of the proximity of death. As a new paradigm of caring, palliative care also aims at encompassing anticipatory mourning experienced by the care unit during patient’s illness, as well as monitoring the mourning family after its relative’s death. The present study utilized a qualitative methodology in order to apprehend the meaning of spirituality assigned by the family member whose a loved one was in a end-of-life process. A collective case study was carried, with the participation of six family members attending a hospice in palliative care, and the investigation was done through field diary and semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed through content analysis according to Bardin (2011) and the following thematic categories were found: expressions of anticipatory mourning, perceptions on/meanings of spirituality, meanings of mourning, protective factors, risk factors. The results suggest that spirituality is a support for those who are on the verge of losing a loved one and should not be neglected by health professionals. It has proved to be an important protection factor for the experience of mourning processes