O cuidado espiritual à mãe de bebê malformado: discurso de enfermeiras assistenciais à luz da Teoria de Watson

Abstract

The spiritual care offered to the mothers of babies affected by congenital malformation is essential for dealing with the suffering emerged since the discovery of this problem. This dissertation consisted of two papers. The first is titled Spirituality, religiosity and congenital malformation: an integrative literature review and aimed to investigate the scientific production on spirituality and religiosity in the context of congenital malformation. We performed a search on the PubMed, LILACS and SciELO, which included papers from 2007 to 2017, obtaining 28 publications. The textual analysis gave rise to two categories: Spiritual and religious practices and the confrontation of the diagnosis and birth by the relatives; Spirituality, religiosity and caring for the malformed child. The results show that spirituality is relevant in the face of congenital malformation. The second paper, original, is titled Spiritual Care provided to mothers of malformed babies in the light of Jean Watson’s Theory: statements of health care nurses. It aimed to investigate the understanding of health care nurses on spirituality; and to analyze the spiritual care for mothers of malformed babies in the light of Jean Watson’s Theory. This is a qualitative field study developed with 11 nurses working in a reference maternity hospital in the town of João Pessoa (PB). The research project was submitted to the Research Ethics Committee of the Health Sciences Center, from which it received an approval certificate, with CAAE registration nº 86954218.0.0000.5188. Data were collected in the months of June and July 2018 through the semi-structured interview technique. We opted for content analysis to analyze the obtained information. The analysis gave rise to two categories: Understanding of nurses on spirituality and spiritual care; Spiritual care offered by nurses to mothers of malformed babies from the perspective of Jean Watson’s Theory. Nurses understand spirituality as something that guides and gives meaning to life and recognize that spiritual care assists in dealing with the problem in question. We noted that these professionals empirically adopt some of the elements of the Caritas Clinical Process adopted by Jean Watson.