Vivências dos médicos de família na abordagem do tema morte com doentes em fim de vida

Abstract

Communication with the Dying Patient is fundamental. In Portugal this is a much unexplored research, specially the Communication about Death by general practitioners to their terminal patient. The aim of this work is to explore the experiences of portuguese general practitioners in Communicating about Death with their Dying Patient. The chosen method was the semi-structured interviews and so 9interviews were conducted to Portuguese General Practitioners included ina snow ball sample.The analyses of the information allowed the identification of twocategories: the Terminal Patient and the General Practitioner. All participants identified in their interviews some individual characteristic (160register units) and aspects of the terminal patient (86 register units) whichinfluence the participant’s behaviour; these register units wheresubsequently gathered in various subcategories according to its key ideas. I highlight the following ideas from the investigation conducted: the participants hardly ever communicate about Death with their terminalpatients; most of the experiences gathered are influenced by the General Practitioners’ fears and their perceptions based on personal concepts and lack of acquired skills, which makes Communication more difficult, and byeach individual patient; the participants don’t feel comfortable Communicating about Death.

Date of Award	Dec 2010
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Margarida Maria Vieira (Supervisor)