"With some care, we can go on": experiences of people with ostomy

Sandra Ost Rodrigues Martins Carvalho,Gabriela Fávero Alberti,Bruna Sodré Simon,Marciele Moreira Da Silva,Maria De Lourdes Denardin Budó

doi:10.1590/0104-07072015003710013

Abstract

The aim of this study was to learn how care takes place in the lives of people with ostomy in a municipality in the countryside of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. A qualitative, descriptive study was conducted. Six people with definitive intestinal ostomy, who were registered in the municipality's program, participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were used for gathering data. The obtained data were subjected to a thematic content analysis, from which the following categories emerged: "I am really well treated, everyone helps"; "My life is a little different"; and "It is necessary to go on, stopping is out of question". The study revealed that care is present in the daily lives of people with ostomy; changes in their lives are clear, related to social interactions, to how they take care of themselves and to eating habits. Ostomized patients learned how to live with these changes, aiming to going back to daily activities and getting involved with chores in their routines.

Highlights

The increase in life expectancy in recent years has been contributing for the increase in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases throughout the world
It is considered necessary for nurses to know and value these types of care, with the aim of knowing its possible benefits, having the capacity to act in a humanized manner in the situation. It is asked: how does care take place in the daily lives of people with ostomies in a small municipality in the countryside of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS)? Aiming to answer that question, the objective was to study the care that permeates the daily experiences of people with ostomies in this Brazilian municipality. This is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach, since it is considered adequate for the researched problem because it deals with the universe of meanings, reasons, beliefs and values from the analysis of reality from different angles to capture the experiences of people or the experience of a given phenomenon.[10]
The study was conducted in a municipality in the mid-western part of Rio Grande do Sul, having as subjects six people with ostomies registered at the Municipal Program for Ostomies of the mentioned city

Summary

Introduction

The increase in life expectancy in recent years has been contributing for the increase in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases throughout the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers chronic health conditions the problems that demand care for an extended period of time, including people with definitive intestinal ostomy. It is an extremely wide group of harms, which are defined by chronicity and the need for continuous care.[1]. Many causes are attributed to this procedure, and the most frequent include trauma, congenital diseases, inflammatory diseases, tumors and intestinal and bladder cancer.[2] The surgery that produces the ostomy is referred to by the ostomized patients as traumatizing, causing deep changes in the way they live, which require specialized care,[3] demanding different resources and specific measures

Objectives

Methods

Results