Abstract
Introduction: Recognizing deeply the death and all the elements that surround it should be of interest to all health care professionals, so that this can appreciate the comfort and dignified death of the patient without feeling guilty or overwhelmed with negative feelings. Objective: Analyzing the perception of Brazilian health professionals about the terminally life. Method: It was used the integrative review for organization and systematization of knowledge. The research was conducted in November 2014, in the LILACS database, through descriptors: nursing, medical, perception, attitude towards death, dying and euthanasia in Portuguese and English in PubMed. The results were obtained after a thorough analysis of 15 selected articles. Results: The evaluation of the work made possible the detection of five perceptions towards death: life stage, technicist conception, move to a better place, liberation from suffering and unexpected interruption of life. It was noticed that nurses are the professionals who have more comprehensive understanding of death as multifaceted event. Moreover, most doctors have a vision centered on the technicists and biological ideals. Conclusion: The reduced number of studies conducted with health professionals from other areas makes it impossible to generalize the findings and promote the need for more studies in the area. Even with a comprehensive understanding by some professionals, those still have difficulties in dealing with the process of death in their daily life. Therefore, there is also need for greater discussion of the topic in academia and in daily practice, to improve the understanding and the attitude of health professionals facing death.
Highlights
Recognizing deeply the death and all the elements that surround it should be of interest to all health care professionals, so that this can appreciate the comfort and dignified death of the patient without feeling guilty or overwhelmed with negative feelings
The reduced number of studies conducted with health professionals from other areas makes it impossible to generalize the findings and promote the need for more studies in the area
There is need for greater discussion of the topic in academia and in daily practice, to improve the understanding and the attitude of health professionals facing death
Summary
Recognizing deeply the death and all the elements that surround it should be of interest to all health care professionals, so that this can appreciate the comfort and dignified death of the patient without feeling guilty or overwhelmed with negative feelings. Death is part of the development of human life, being characterized as a natural fact and expected. Some experiments experienced by every human being give an analogy of the idea of death with separation and disease, making man's view on the subject somewhat negative [1]. Improvements that have brought up the dilemma surrounding death, mainly which related to artificially prolonging the life of terminal patients, incurring on the patient's autonomy concepts and human dignity facing discussions on the practices of euthanasia, dysthanasia and orthotanasia seeking a dignified death [3]
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