<b>Home care to individual with tetraplegia: an experience report</b> - doi: 10.4025/cienccuidsaude.v11i1.18879

Abstract

Medullar lesions, which are normally a result of car accidents, can lead to paraplegia or tetraplegia, causing serious problem in public health, with extended treatments and multiples medium and long-term complications. The aim of this article is to report the experience of family care in a tetraplegia situation. It is an experience report, whose sources were interviews with two familiar caretakers, and the memories lived by one of the work’s author. The ethics standards in research were followed. The lived experience disclosed profound transformations and family adaptations in taking care of a tetraplegic uncle, with the need of technological innovations and lots of care, and also the occurrence of complications resulting from the immobilization and the incorrect functioning of some organs. It is concluded that family, in these cases, represents the extension and corporality of someone incapable of moving physically, but capable of moving people and space around them, and that nursing can and must act with knowledge, abilities and feelings attending the individuals and their families in such situations.