“Fizemos o possível ”: os ritos e narrativas médicas em torno da vida e da morte no Hospital de Pronto Socorro João XXIII

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze, with the help of ethnographic approach, the ways in which medical professionals for emergency care deal with death in professional practice. Therefore, it was chosen as the field of study Emergency Hospital João XXIII, located in the city of Belo Horizonte, MG, referral hospital for trauma, in Latin America. From an analysis in the field, three types of deaths that occur in hospital, were formulated as follows: "death as a possibility", in which there is an institutional and the medical team mobilization to defeat death and save lives; "death in life", site dedicated to patients chronic sequelae involving a double meaning of death: both social and physical; and finally, "the (almost) certainty of death: the SAV a death that can save lives", including patients with suspected brain death and at the same time, are potential donors. In these different death spaces this ethnography was carried out accompanied by interviews with the doctors of the sectors listed in order to understand the relationship of these on the different types of death, through institutional rites and medical narratives in the hospital context. Moreover, in a second moment, we sought to understand how these doctors as individuals, subjects and professionals deal with death. Data analysis pointed to ethical, institutional, cultural and idiosyncratic relationships in medical action in face of lives and deaths.