Dados do Trabalho

Título

PERCEPTION OF THE MULTI-PROFESSIONAL TEAM ON THERAPEUTIC OBSTINATION IN AN ONCOLOGY UNIT

Introdução

Palliative care timing is associated with improving the quality of life and care at the end of life. This is part of a conflictive field of interventions, which also includes therapeutic obstination, which has an impact on the quality of life of the patient and his surroundings, with undeniable ethical implications. Therapeutic obstination is defined when the continued and persistent use of measures that sustain the lives of patients with advanced diseases, with prolonged maintenance of vital biological systems and consequent delay in death. Based on these findings, the following research question was asked: For the multi-professional team, what is the perception and reasons for this regarding the alignment of the proposed treatment and the expected prognosis in cancer patients?

Objetivo

To know the perception, as well as its factors and reasons, of the professionals of the multidisciplinary team regarding the proposed therapeutic treatment and expected prognosis in cancer patients.

Método

Quantitative field research, through cross-section, carried out in April 2019 in an oncology inpatient unit, in a highly complex hospital in the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

Resultado

64 professionals from the multidisciplinary team were interviewed, 58% of whom believe that the patient receives more treatment than the expected prognosis, the main reasons being: family pressure (37%) and lack of initiative to talk to the family/patient (26%).

Conclusão

It was observed that there is a perception of the multidisciplinary team that patients are receiving treatment beyond what is necessary according to their prognosis, such finding can be related to several reasons, one of the most important being the ineffective communication between the health teams that take care of the patients and/or between the teams and the patient/family since the lack of alignment regarding a patient's care objective can correlate with a higher rate of suffering for the patient and rich in complicated mourning for family members, as well as higher levels of stress among the teams. Thus, we believe that further studies are needed to investigate these factors and their impacts in more detail.

Palavras-chave

palliative care. oncology. multiprofesional team. therapeutic obstination. shared decision making.

Área

Oncologia - Cuidados Paliativos, Suporte e Terminalidade