End-of-life care: listening to the relatives

Abstract

Palliative care proposes a transformation in the form of taking care of individuals in their terminality and, mainly, of their families, because it goes through vicissitudes in several dimensions of existence. Thus, the aim of this study was to understand the family in their being-in the-world, taking care at the end of life. It is a qualitative research that used the methodological strategy of multiple cases study. The descriptions obtained from the relatives' language were analyzed to the light of Heidegger existential phenomenology. The study was accomplished in the period of June and July 2010, with the participation of two family members who took care of individuals in their death/dying process. From the meanings expressed by the subjects, it was apprehended that dimension of suffering associated with cancer and terminal condition, generate the family anguish, fears and anxieties, thereby giving rise to the need to develop an appropriate care the condition experienced by the family, assistance that this goes against the precepts of palliative care.