Afetividade e ambiente hospitalar: construção de significados pelo paciente oncológico com dor

Abstract

The category pain has been the object of study from different health professionals. In the hospital context, the pacients bodies seem to speak through the pain, announcing that something is not well and it directly modifies the pacient`s quality of life. In the case of the oncological patients, the pain figures as one of the most present symptom and as one of the most frequent reasons for disability and suffering for people with the cancer in progression. The present study is a research on the socio-cultural aspects of pain, focusing points as the social and cultural construction of the meaning of pain and the influence of hospital environment in the expressions of pain by the patients. This study aimed to comprehend the relationship between the hospital and the oncological patient with pain, over the hospitalization process, through the affection: feelings and emotions. We have chosen the theoretical referencial of Environmental Psychology with historic-cultural and psicossocial focus. When studying the relationship between patient and hospital from the affection, based on that theoretical and methodological perspective, we aimed to surpass the dichotomies men-society, objectivity-subjectivity, biological-social, environmental-subject, rationality-affection. The field research was performed at "Hospital do Câncer – Instituto do Câncer do Ceará". The instruments used were: observation, including conversations with the professionals of the infirmaries; documents consultation (medical records); and construction of affective maps with 10 patients, eight adults and two teenagers, who were hospitalized and had recurrent complaints of pain in the medical records. The data collected were analyzed and were grouped into four thematic categories, named: cancer pain; cultural aspects of pain; hospital; and health care team. By the process of senses articulation called affective map, we made the following images in the hospital environment: Contrast; suffering; pleasantness, and insecurity. We have searched, throughout this work, to relate the patients pain with the feelings and emotions of the subjects in the hospital environment. The results showed how the study of the environment through the affection may promote the humanization and the treatment of oncologic patients with pain.