The need of palliative care: A scenario of a public high complexity hospital in Brazil

24^th World Nursing and Healthcare Conference

September 13-15, 2018 | Copenhagen, Denmark

Maria Gouvea

Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Adv Practice Nurs

Abstract :

The epidemiological and demographic transition in Brazil presents a challenge to the management of public health. Chronic noncommunicable diseases (CNCD) has the highest incidence in elderly population which demands longer hospitalizations in a system that has not increased the number of hospital beds in the past decade. In this scenario arise palliative care (PC), a therapeutic approach for patients with life threatening diseases that seeks to mitigate the pain and ease the suffering of patients and their families. The objective of this research is to identify potential patients to palliative care by creating a situational diagnosis of two months of hospitalization at HUCAM. To this end, documentary and quantitative research was conducted identifying patients who could be benefited by palliative care. Data as age, diagnosis and hospitalizations were collected. Palliative Performance Scale were used to monitor disease progression and as indicator of the functional decline of patient, was applied to define the necessary level of palliative care. Among the 198 identified patients, 57.1% were older than 60 years, 48% were suffering from cancer, 64% had more than one hospitalization. Unfortunately, 18.2% died during this research. The result shows that people maybe dying alone and suffering. Therefore, the implementation of palliative care could lead to an early discharge or to rehospitalization optimizing the use of hospital beds of medium and high complexity also respecting the dignity of the ones facing death.

Biography :

Maria Gouvea pursued her Nursing Degree and her Master’s Degree in Public Management from Federal University of Espírito Santo - UFES. She is a Nurse at Espaço Amar (School) and also works at Cassiano Antonio Moraes University Hospital. She studied palliative care since her college. She has published a paper about nursing care in “Cuidado é fundamental (Care is fundamental) – online Research Journal and participated at 5th Sao Paulo Congress of Human Milk Banks, XV Maternal Breast Paulista Encounter II Regional Macro Congress of Bank of Human Milk.