Entrevista da aluna Maiara Santos sobre sua participação na ADEC

Data: 09/01/2015

Member Spotlight The student members being profiled in this issue were recipients of a scholarship for the 2014 ADEC Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Maiara Santos, MA, PhD(c)

Maiara Santos is a doctoral student at the University of São Paulo, School of Nursing, Brazil. She earned her master’s degree in pediatric nursing at the University of São Paulo (2012). She has been a member of the Interdisciplinary Nucleus for Research in Loss and Bereavement (NIPPEL). In particular, she is currently involved in the experience of families, children and health professional in their relationships during the child's dying process at the hospital. She is also involved in investigations about palliative care.

Do you have a mentor/role model who has significantly affected your career path in thanatology? Tell us why you chose this career path.

As a nurse, I was very interested to delve into research about caring and human relationships. My interest in thanatology was both a curiosity and an inner desire to know how I could get closer and help others living in situations of intense suffering and vulnerability. All these concerns led me to the research group, which I am very proud to be a part of – Interdisciplinary Nucleus for Research in Loss and Bereavement (NIPPEL, University of Sao Paulo) – coordinated by my mentor, Dr. Regina Bousso, who has significantly influenced my career. She always has included students in her research and job in the field. She has showed me that the human dimension in any relationship is as much essential as it is challenging. By her influence, my colleagues and I were integrated into ADEC activities and got to know great researchers in the field, bringing to our discussion and research the challenge of thinking about integrating models of coping with bereavement into nursing care practice.

What advice would you offer a more junior professional in the field on growing their career or keeping their work fresh?

I believe that working with people in an end-of-life situation provides us constant challenges and transformative human contacts. Therefore, in this field you have to be open to the unexpected and to new possibilities of human connection. This allows us to care for others with compassion, gratitude and in a genuine manner, but at the same time it makes us face many professional and personal challenges, and therefore, to take care of ourselves is very important. Caring of our essence, body and soul is the first challenge for those who want to work in the field.

What do you think the future holds for your work and that of others like you? How will that impact what you do?

Here in Brazil, practice and research in the area have been growing, but we are still at the beginning. We are learning how our culture affects the decisions, desires, care and relationships when a loved one is dying. There are growing movements to introduce a more holistic practice for caring, increasing palliative care and bereavement groups inside the hospitals and creating hospices in cities like Sao Paulo, for example. I believe that, although our culture represents a 'silent' way of dealing with death and dying in Brazil, the growing discussions in the field and the inclusion of models in practice can modify the context of caring for families and those who are dying. Consequently, this is the context in which my colleagues and I will hold our investigations in the future.

December 2014