Oncologia e espiritualidade: relevância e possibilidades de uma capelania hospitalar junto a pacientes oncológicos indicados a um programa de cuidados paliativos

Abstract

The oncological patient indicated for palliative care is a whole and multidimensional being at the same time. He/She is a single body but made up of various parts. Any proposal of care for this patient can be compromised if the person’s physical, psychological, social, institutional, ecological and, especially, spiritual dimensions are not considered and tended to. The three chapters of this work point to this conclusion. In the first chapter, there is a description of the wholeness and multidimensionality of the human being, duly grounded. In the second chapter, the attention is drawn to the definitions of cancer, oncology, oncological patient and palliative care, seeing as this is the central context and point of interest of this research. We highlight the description of the implications which cancer, from the suspicion and diagnostic to the impossibility of cure and indication to palliative care has on the multidimensionality of a patient. In the third chapter, hospital chaplaincy is presented in conceptual and historical terms to then be presented as a possibility of care of the spiritual dimension or spiritual needs of oncological patients indicated for palliative care.