<b>The cultural perspective in the nursing care to the oncologic patient</b> - DOI: 10.4025/cienccuidsaude.v8i0.9714

Abstract

This article has as proposal contemplates about the sociocultural construction of the cancer, under the point of view of the people that live the experience . It is arises of a qualitative study with theoretical-methodological approach of the interpretative anthropology and of the ethnographic method , with the participation of ten informers in radiotherapic treatment , of both sexes, in the age group from 34 to 80 years. The data were collected in the period of March to August of 2007 by semistructured interviews and participant observation in their homes in the South Area of Brazil. The results appeared for the path of the disease, from the first signs and symptoms, until the cultural construction of being an oncologic patient and for the demands that new identity carries. We verified that the built meanings evidence the need to enlarge the care, including the sociocultural references of the people's context that live the process of having cancer. In the case of nursing, that means a form of crossing the biological dimension of taking care. In this thought, we understood to be necessary to build, close to the people attacked by the cancer, care strategies that assist their cultural conceptions, with views to promote their survival with quality.