Narratives about the perspective of patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment

• Grant number: 24/13908-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2024
• End date: November 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Eliana Goldfarb Cyrino
• Grantee: Bruna Sartori Martins
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FMB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Patients with chronic kidney disease, when in an advanced stage, need to replace their kidney function. For this, the most commonly used treatment is hemodialysis, a therapy carried out in clinics or hospitals, where the patient needs to travel three times a week and stays for around 4 hours at a time. During treatment, the individual interacts with other patients and the care team, but cannot avoid treatment, under penalty of imminent risk to their lives. For more than 40 years, the importance of understanding the sick person's perspective has been recognized as a way of embracing their suffering, valuing their experiences and overcoming, and humanizing health care. However, in hemodialysis treatment, there is routinely no listening space that allows the individual to bring their perspective on the illness or treatment. The objective of this work is to provide such a listening space to understand, through narratives, the experience of patients monitored in the HCFMB hemodialysis service, valuing their life and illness history and their individual paths to deal with the challenges of treatment and illness. Around 20 patients will be invited to participate in the research and interviews will be carried out during the Hemodialysis sessions. The interviews will be recorded and later transcribed. Repetitive reading will be followed by Thematic Analysis of the content, seeking to classify the meaning cores corresponding to the themes that appeared in the interview, grouping the perceptions/content around each theme. The result is expected to be able to contribute to understanding the perspective of the sick subject as a way of embracing their suffering, valuing their experiences and overcoming, and humanizing health care.