Cartas terapêuticas

: um meio para acolher a criança e a família nas instituições de saúde

Abstract

This report comprizes the scope of Therapeutic Letters: A way to receive chidren and their families in the heath facilities. The main goals of this summary are to provide evidence of registered development with respect to the duration of the clinical practice, to outlay the goals and perfected activities of this unit, as well as to present a critical and reflexive analysis of the learning process and competency development. In order to analyze registered development, the report contrasts actual developed general and specific competencies with those that are expected from a specialist nurse in assisting the child and family. When engaging in care giving to a given infant/child, it is of the utmost importance for the nurse to bear in mind the efficacy of appropriately gauging the patterns of communication in the scope of the relationship. Similarly, it is also important for the nurse to engage in this kind of process with the infant/child's family, thus ensuring maximization of care giving quality at each of the patient's cycle stages. Consequently, and assuming the aforementioned parameters are met, it can be inferred that the therapeutic letters intervention can be an asset when then goal is to improve the quality of provided assistance in the field of pediatrics. In the community context, three main formats of therapeutic letters were developed, as well as their respective system architectures. These developments were accompanied by a sharing session between parents, and by a set of guiding rules that are meant to help families in the self-assessment process of the child's health state. Furthermore, a system architecture for this process was also elaborated. Subsequently, and in the context of a hospital, a certificate of courage was designed, the set of guiding rules were revised in the domain of family receiving, and a set of guiding rules were developed in the domain of adolescent receiving. During the internship in the neonatology unit, a logbook that is intended for sharing of parent experience was developed. The therapeutic letters intervention was also revised to adapt to a situation of a pediatric urgency nature, as well as the set of guiding rules. It should be mentioned that during all stages of the clinical practice, the appropriate gauging of interpersonal communication techniques was of paramount importance, thus always bore in mind. In addition, techniques that permit the care giver to freely provide human capital feedback to the patient were also developed and implemented.

Date of Award	May 2011
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Judite Vaz (Supervisor)