REPRESENTATIONS AND CARE PRACTICES WITH A CHRONIC WOUND OF THE INFERIOR MEMBER: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The objective of this study was to interpret the cultural manifestations and representations of care of health-service users with chronic wounds to inferior members. The research is clinic-qualitative and was carried out in February and March 2010. Individual semi-structured interviews were carried out with 8 users of the ambulatory service; the interviews were analysed with the technique of content analysis. The following thematic categories emerged from the study: I can’t wait to get better to get back to work! – impact of the wound on daily life; Folk tell me stuff and I try it! – practices of care with a chronic wound; It’s being irritable! – an explicative model. One may consider that the diverse health problems which become visible in the materiality of the physical body are, equally, permeated with symbolical questions which write themselves across the daily life of their carriers, reaffirming the social character of the health-illness process.

Keywords

• Wounds and lesions
• Cultural anthropology
• Nursing
• Traditional medicine