Weaknesses and strengths of the multidisciplinary team in the development of palliative care in an Intensive Care Unit

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira, Clarissa Peruzzo
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Bellinati, Natalia Veronez da Cunha, Silva, Bruna Fernanda da
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Research, Society and Development
• Texto Completo: https://rsdjournal.org/index.php/rsd/article/view/17989
• topic: Comfort Care; Intensive Care Unit; Palliative Care; Interdisciplinarity.; Cuidado de la comodidad; Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos; Cuidados paliativos; Interdisciplinariedad.; Cuidados de Conforto; Unidade de Terapia Intensiva; Paliativismo; Interdisciplinaridade.

Palliative care (PC) consists of assistance provided by a multidisciplinary team, which aims to improve the quality of life of patients and their families in the face of a life-threatening disease. Thus, an integrative review was carried out in order to identify in the literature the weaknesses and strengths of the multidisciplinary team in the development of palliative care in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The search for scientific articles was performed in the Google Academic, PubMed and Virtual Health Library databases in July 2020, with 11 articles being selected to compose the review. It was observed that the potentials are poorly recognized by most professionals who are part of the multidisciplinary team within the ICU, and they recognize the need to offer comfort in the final moments of life and realize that the presence of PC in the ICU can improve the end-of-life patient quality. However, there are still many weaknesses/difficulties in implementing this care, such as: non-shared team work, lack of interaction and communication between professionals in the multidisciplinary team, the unpreparedness of professionals to deal with patients in PC due to lack of knowledge and adequate training, and also, ethical conflicts and the absence of specific protocols. It is important to offer training and continuing education to qualify these professionals for PC and it is necessary to implement specific protocols in palliative care in intensive care settings, to reduce suffering and to improve the quality of care offered to this patient in the final phase of life.