When emptiness installs into being: reflections about being ill, dying and death

Abstract

This work is a multidisciplinary exercise from professors about getting sick, dying and death developed in a seven meetings course for undergraduate students in Social Work and Physiotherapy courses at the Federal University of Parana (UFPR – Coastline Sector). Authors put efforts to nominate, discuss, and discoursed the possibilities and limitations of biotechnology in the context of physical and functional disabilities, their philosophical, sociological, psychological, and biological aspects. Group dynamics, film projections, concept maps, text discussion, and exchange of
experiences were used. The outcome of the process allowed the following considerations: 1) death has lost its interdicted feature and it was perceived as a natural process of life; 2) to get sick and to die were identified as a bio-psycho-social build up, despite being primarily an individual experience. In view of these findings, the necessity to emphasize bioethical presumption in the teaching and learning process providing basis for the debate about individual and collective rights and duties, as well as to lexicalize and the judicial review in this area.