Abstract

BATISTA, Henrique Shody Hono; RIBEIRO, Thiago Oliari  and  FREITAS, Joanneliese de Lucas. Where does it hurt?: Pain meaning for physicians and residents. Arq. bras. psicol. [online]. 2018, vol.70, n.2, pp.204-218. ISSN 1809-5267.

The pain evaluation may differ between physicians and patients. To understand the meanings doctors give to their patient's pain, we interviewed six physicians, and their reports were analyzed through Giorgi´s phenomenological qualitative method. The results revealed ambiguity as central to the pain meaning structure and it is present not only in its conceptual definition but also in its clinics and intervention. The analyses show that the absence of material evidence of pain and its ambiguous and subjective nature, subordinated to patient's reports, intensifies the difficulties faced by physicians in pain evaluation. The analyses also indicate a conflict between the paradigms that support physiological explanations of pain and its clinical manifestations. We conclude that the painful phenomenon defies the organicist paradigm and requires an empathetic evaluation, in which evaluative criteria must be the confidence in patient's reports not just in objective data.

Keywords : Pain; Suffering; Medicine; Phenomenological-existential psychology.

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