PALLIATIVE CARE AT GRADUATION: LEARNING ABOUT INTEGRALITY AND SPIRITUALITY

Palliative care (PC) are a set of measures offered for people with incurable diseases and their families to ease their physical, psychosocial and spiritual suffering. The aim of this paper is to present an assessment of 13 medical and psychology students of the University of Rio de Janeiro State (UERJ) on their experience on the palliative care unit (PCU) of the university hospital, in June 2015. To the Academic League of Medicines and Spirituality (LiAME) it was offered an intership on PCU. Students League participated by a period of at least four hours each. After all, they were asked to answer a questionnaire with 9 questions and report their experiences through a journal. Questionnaire: 10 responded, 8 had no previous experience in PC and all evaluated the experience as excellent. Other results: I) Learning: care will aside from medication; therapeutic listening should also be reach the caregivers; II) Impact on education: overcome the fear of interacting with patients; broaden perspectives to the human suffering and the possibilities of action; Journal: Their speech were coded into two mean categories: (A) Perceptions of integral care: many reported the fact of caregivers are included in the network of care. (B) Impact of spirituality in patients: patients with high spiritual degree showed positive disease facing. Participants experienced an opportunity of comprehensive health care. This experience is in accordance with the new National Curriculum Guideline and should be widely offered to all students of different health professions.