TEIXEIRA, C. J. C. Fraternidade à flor da pele: visita de irmãos na uti pediátrica [Fraternity emotion run high: siblings visit in the pediatric intensive care unit]. Master’s Dissertation. Instituto de Psicologia da USP, são Paulo (SP), 2020.
Available on: Fraternidade à flor da pele: visita de irmãos na uti pediátrica (usp.br)
The hospitalization of a sick child has a great impact on the family, even more when it occurs in an Intensive Care Unit. Sometimes, patients’ siblings start to show changes in sleep, behavior, as well as aggression, sadness or regression. Faced with these factors and with the intention of providing more humanized care, some hospitals have implemented the Siblings Visit Program in the ICU. This research was carried out in the Pediatric ICU of a public hospital in the city of São Paulo with the aim of investigating the emotional aspects of the siblings who visit patients admitted to the Pediatric ICU. The sample consisted of four siblings of patients admitted to the Pediatric ICU, aged 5 to 12 years old, of both sexes. The research instruments used were: interview, patients record, observation of the visit to the ICU and Drawing-and-Story Procedure. The D-E was applied with two units before the visit (20 minutes), and three after it. The analysis was based on psychoanalytic theory, considering their formal aspects and content. The results showed that the participants expressed fear of admitted siblings death and desire for healing from them, as well feelings of lack of protection, abandonment and anxiety. The parents’ difficulty in dealing with a child’s hospitalization to the detriment of other family members and the rupture of the family routine as a destabilizing agent of the domestic balance, besides the fragility of all family members in the face of illness of one of them, among other results. The data suggest that the Siblings Visit Program is beneficial in the situation of hospitalization of a sick sibling. They also indicate that the D-E was sensitive to capture the emotional state of the sibling who participated in the research.