On death and dying: perceptions of medical students in Northern Brazil

Abstract:

Introduction:

Death is a universal phenomenon that remains significantly debatable, and although there is still a tendency to avoid the topic, it is an important element in the health-disease process. Thus, grief and perceptions of death become more complex, especially for individuals unprepared to face death, which is recurrent in the social and professional environment of medical practice.

Objectives:

To evaluate views on death, the dying process and mourning among medical students at the Federal University of Amapá (UNIFAP).

Methods:

This is a cross-sectional, exploratory and descriptive study using a mixed, qualitative and quantitative method. The sample consisted of students from the “Emotions in the Health / Illness / Death Process” module of the UNIFAP Medical School, who answered a sociodemographic questionnaire regarding their experience with death and perceptions about the death process and dying. For the quantitative data, descriptive statistics were processed, and for the qualitative data, the Bardin Content Analysis method was used to form semantic groupings which were used for comparison between groups. Tagclouds were used to summarize answers according to importance and frequency.

Results:

There was an understanding of death as a natural process in 55.6% of the sample, and, regarding coping strategies for bereavement, 7.4% reported not having any strategies, whereas 24.1% use problem-solving, 22.2% self-confidence, and 20.4% accommodation, as their usual coping strategy. Furthermore, 35.2% revealed academic-professional preparation, in addition to emotional preparation to deal with the situation of a patient dying, whereas 51.9% and 50% directly revealed academic-professional and emotional unpreparedness, respectively. In this regard, the emotions of sadness, anguish and missing were the most linked to death, the process of dying and bereavement, considering the frequency of mentions by the students.

Conclusions:

Overall there was a greater perception of unpreparedness in the face of death. The analysis of the evoked unconscious showed emotions such as sadness and anguish associated with death, dying and bereavement. Thus, it is essential that the subject of dying and death be approached in a continuous and periodic manner, with practical association, throughout medical education.

Keywords:
Death; Bereavement; Perception; Medical Education