O processo da morte e a vivência do luto na UTI Adulto e suas repercussões nas profissionais de enfermagem

Abstract

The Adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a department intended to the care of serious patients or at risk of death who need uninterrupted medical and nursing assistance. Thus, it is common for nursing professionals who work in this type of unit to have frequent contact with death and to be somehow impacted by this process. The aim of this study is to know the understanding of these professionals about this event and to understand how they experience the death of patients, deal with grief in the Adult ICU of the researched hospital, as well as the repercussions of this process for these workers. The theoretical lens that conducted this research is the Occupational Health field, which starts from a materialist perspective and a premise of the centrality of work in human life, to think about the repercussions of work on the workers’ health. Semi-structured interviews were carried out remotely (online) with nursing professionals working in the Adult ICU of a university hospital in the interior of Minas Gerais. The data were treated using the Content Analysis methodology, involving these following the steps: pre-analysis, coding, categorization and interpretations. The analyzed topics originated the following information, grouped and specific categories: the sociodemographic profile of the professionals interviewed, the contact with death in professional practice, the experience of grieving, the repercussions of death and grief experiences on personal and/or professional life, the change in the view related to the death of patients as a result of the time in the profession, the experiences related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the strategies to improve the process of dealing with death and grief in the context of the ICU. Through this study, it was possible to notice the fact that these professionals deal with the death of patients frequently causes them different emotions, being more commonly reported sadness, regret and frustration. All these interviewees reported that their way of dealing with the death of patients has changed over time in the profession and, in the way to protect themselves, they use different strategies to deal with these situations. For most of the participants in this research, the COVID-19 pandemic caused changes in the way patients experience death and the respective experience of grieving. It was perceived the absence of psychological and emotional support directed to these workers by the institution in which they work. Another difficulty observed is the lack of training for these professionals, which does not prepare them to face a reality in which they have to deal with the patients’ death and with the relational and human aspects associated with this process.