FAMILY IN THE PAEDIATRICS UNIT: NURSING TEAM'S PERCEPTION ABOUT THE CARING DIMENSION

Abstract

The goal of this study was to identify the meaning of care to the hospitalised child’s family for the nursing team of the paediatrics unit of an academic hospital in southern Brazil. Five nurses, three nursing technicians and two nursing assistants took part in this research. All of the ethical precepts that rule the researches with human beings were followed. Data were collected in November of 2006 through semi-structured interviews and analysed according to the dialectic-hermeneutic method. Results demonstrate that professionals recognize that the family has needs, which are an in dissociable part of the assistance. It was still possible to conclude that even though there is still a strong tendency to assess the technical and mechanical aspects of the attendance represented by the direct care, the nursing team accomplishes a series of indirect care that aim at an integral and humanised approach. It is concluded that is necessary that the nursing team which renders attendance to the interned child undertake with dynamism its attention for the provision of the relative’s needs, moving away, therefore, of a technical and mechanic model, and in this way assessing what it does, making its work more visible and humanised.