Author:

• Denise Stefanoni Combinato - Combinato, DS - Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Centro de Memória da Unicamp - <msq@unicamp.br>

Thematic Area:

Não Categorizado

Abstract:

This article focuses on the conception of death and, in particular, the social construction of its meaning by a health professional team, who works in an intensive hospitalar care unit. Thirteen professionals (six medical doctors and seven nurses) participated in the research, through semi-structured interviews. Despite the fact that death is a part of the human development and is present in the daily working life of these health professionals, the denial of its existence imposed by the culture of the modern western world prevents the development of specific strategies to meet this problem. Based on the explicative method of Vigotski, three main conceptions of death were extracted from the interviews: death as a natural consequence of life; death as a biological process and death as a divine blessing. In the absence of a proper space for a more systematical approach, the social representations from the professionals on this theme are restricted to a subjective level. In the conclusion, it is emphasized the need for a change in the institutional context and health education, with a specific focus directed on death and on the process of dying.
Key words: representations on death, health professionals and death, social representations and Vigotski.

Content:

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