Death experience and the students in the educational practice

Abstract

Investigating death, which is part of the human existence, in the educational context of the health area, may become a moment to humanize the educational process and propitiate an authentic, critical, unusual and creative act in the nursing actions. It was with the perspective of understanding death in the quotidian of the nursing student-professor relationship that I listened to the professors for, through their discourses, to capture the meanings to make possible the unveiling of this phenomenon. All the professors of the Fundamentals of Nursing II of the State University of Maringá-Pr, were interviewed. This choice is due to the fact that it is through this discipline that the students get in touch, for the first time, with the hospital world and its routine, with the pain, the suffering and the death. The obtaining of the speeches, seeking the phenomenon to be unveiled was orientated by the target question: What is the meaning for you to witness death in the quotidian of the studentteacher relationship? The phenomenon was revealed to be a lonely experience, an experience that happens to each one of us professors. It becomes a burden difficult to carry but easy to hide and/or suffocate. That hiding is expressed under the form of no verbalization, and no discussion about it. No talking about death in the teachinglearning relationship is very common among professors. That hiding form, most of the times is shown as armor, a protection shell. But, it is also shown as an obstacle for a more humanized formation, the one directed towards a better understanding of human nature and its world.