Aims

(1) To identify the influence of the contextualization of sedated patient, by means of life reports and photographs, from the perception of care of the nursing team and (2) to evaluate the proposed intervention as a strategy for humanization in the care for sedated patients.

Method

Qualitative intervention study, with 43 professionals of the nursing team of an Intensive Care Unit. Data collection consisted of a prior interview, the intervention (fixing of pictures and life reports of sedated patients to the bedside and orientation for the professionals to read them, with the intervention lasting 10 days) and a post-intervention interview. Three frames were fixed and these contained a photograph and life reports of the patients collected through their family members.

Results

In the pre-intervention, the discourses showed that verbal interaction provides more security during the care, there are reasons for preferring to care for unconscious patients, such as the challenge of the complexity and the reward with recovery, as well as the unavailability to attend to frequent requests of the conscious patient. The care was valorized independent of the level of consciousness, knowledge about aspects of the patient’s life increased involvement and there was a concern not to judge the patient and to rescue the best of the other. In the post-intervention, it was observed that the contextualization of the patient rescued important elements for the care, such as emotion promoting sensitization, the awakening of empathy with the contextualization, and the involvement and commitment to the care. In addition, a conflict between change of attitude and being defensive was apparent.

Conclusion

The proposed intervention was validated as a strategy for humanization in the care for sedated patients.

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