Meanings that occupational therapists attribute to narrative reasoning in the evaluation and intervention processes within critical care units

Abstract

The article analyzes how a group of occupational therapists in a critical care unit give meaning to the use of narrative reasoning in the assessment and intervention of patients with critical illnesses. The research used a qualitative methodology with a phenomenological approach and non-probabilistic sampling. Information was collected through in-depth interviews with occupational therapists who work in a critical care unit. Dialogues emerged from these interviews and were coded, allowing themes, categories, and subcategories to be identified, which allowed the collected data to be interpreted from a hermeneutic perspective. Among the most relevant results obtained, it can be shown that occupational therapists in a critical care unit attribute great importance to the implementation of narrative reasoning and strategies that involve the creation and telling of stories in the evaluation, intervention, and recovery processes of patients with critical illnesses. This is because narrative reasoning facilitates the therapeutic process by allowing occupational therapists to understand the meaning of the illness and the influence of the environment, grounding the therapeutic actions used in the evaluation and intervention within these units. In conclusion, it is possible to establish that the application of narrative reasoning and its two branches, storytelling and story creation, is essential for the assessment and intervention of critical patients. This rescues the patient's experience, allowing for the expression of everyday life and reducing socio-cultural barriers in a biomedical context.