Trabalhadores de saúde do serviço de oncologia: prazer, sofrimento e estratégias defensivas

Abstract

This work is an exploratory and descriptive qualitative research that had as its main goal to understand how workers of health in oncology develop their professional practice with patients according to their perspectives of pleasure, suffering and defensive strategies. Nine workers of a High Complexity Oncology Center health team participate in this study. A questionnaire for social demographic evaluation and semistructured interviews were applied for data collection. Data was processed using content analysis. Regarding the results, 90% of workers are females, married, around 35 years old, have no children, but hold a college degree and have been working in the field between one and five years. The majority, 77%, of the interviewed workers chose to work in this field. When asked about pleasure, they indicate that it is related to the patients wellbeing, the importance of their job, recognition and organization. Regarding the suffering, the interviewees pointed out the following: fear of becoming ill (related to the diseases issues), becoming contaminated, to make a mistake in their procedure, difficulty of working with children, teenagers and elder patients, not be able of fulfilling the patients expectations such as curing, saving or improving their clinical conditions, intensive working hours, work overload, patients with late diagnosis, no previous or continuous care in the patients cities, as well as economic and operational difficulties to have access to proper treatment in some cases. Among the defensive strategies used by the workers are individual actions and team work. For instance, individual preventive strategies are: time away from the work environment, not become involved affectively with the patients and to have recognition for their work. Team work strategies include: group meetings as well as support from friends and family. In this sense, to understand the health workers experiences, mainly in oncology, is important to make positive interventions while organizing the process and their work.