The communication of bad news from the perspective of family members of people with neurodegenerative diseases
Family Members, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Communication in Health.
Communication is indispensable for medical practice and provides better quality of health care. The communication of bad news concerns informations that negatively and impactfully alters the patient's future perspective, threatening their physical or mental well-being, as well as their lifestyle. Patients with neurodegenerative diseases and their family members, throughout the illness process, can face several moments of bad news communication. This study's objective is to comprehend the psychosocial challenges and impacts in the communication with the medical team, especially in bad news situations, according to the perspective of family members of adult patients with neurodegenerative diseases. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study with qualitative data processing to be done with fifteen first degree family members of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's Disease. They must respond to two questionnaires for the sociodemographic and medical-clinical data collecting and participate in a semi-structured interview. The transcribed reports from the interviews will be categorized according to the Bardin's Content Analysis and the data obtained from the questionnaires will be analyzed using descriptive statistics. It is expected that the study's result will contribute to subsidize the training and performance of health professionals, especially doctors, in the process of communicating with treated patients' family members.