Life and death in primary care: family and community physician's reflections before the finitude of life
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5712/rbmfc11(38)1281Keywords:
Primary health care. Community Family Practice. Palliative CareAbstract
Primary Care has the ability to enable the end of life care to be systemic, humanized and autonomy promoting. However, working at palliative care requires that the team develop a complex and multidimensional point of view, especially due to the proximity with reflections about death and existential, social, religious and personal perspectives. In this way, questions about how to deal with the subjective dimension of patients, families and professionals emerge as a challenge in clinical practice. Reporting the family physicians’ perspectives, we present the case of a patient in palliative care accompanied by a Family Health Strategy team, an unusual scenario for palliative care in Brazil. Thinking about the personal and existential dimensions of the professionals, we discuss factors that favor or hinder the comprehensive care towards the end of a life. We noticed that, despite the challenge of care in terms of resource and time, the dialogue among the team and the biopsychosocial-spiritual approach enabled the redefinition of the process of care, disease and death.
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