TRYING TO UNOERSTANO THE CANCER PATIENT EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Objective

An understanding of the more important reactions and behaviors of a patient living with cancer is the objective of the present study, deve/oped in the hermeneutic tradition of research, guided by the epistemological assumptions of constructivism. lt uses social representations as an analytical method.

Methods

Ten adult ma/e and fema/e patients with various types of cancer, living in a city in the interior of the State of São Paulo, Brazil, were interviewed. Their answers were transcribed and analyzed, searching for analytical categories in the light of social representations.

Results

Three of these patients were highlighted in this study, with their respective subdivisions: identifying the cause, which leads to the understanding that the search for the diagnosis is characterized by anxiety, fears, anguish, doubts and hopes; fighting the enemy, which shows the need for adaptation to situations of

/oss of individuality because of hospitalization, need of health care and treatment traumas, facts permeated by living with emotions of sadness, anguish, fear and concern about death.

Conclusion

Understanding this process gives the nurse conditions to devise other ways of assisting and helping the patient to live with the experience and respond in a positive manner to the disease and to his reactions to it.