They hold a seminar on Health Psychology in the Dominican Republic
SANTO DOMINGO. -The Area of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) performed the seminar "Development of health psychology in the Dominican Republic" in which several experts for the Psychology and "Salud" addressed issues regarding how they should communicate y behave that doctors, nurses y psychologists with the indispensable and necessary oncology patients, Chronically ill and also terminals.
During the conference, which was held in the Julio Ravelo de la Fuente Room of the university, the psychologist Maricecili Mora, coordinator for the Master in Clinical and Health Psychology, stressed that, for years, Dominican professionals are contributing to the creation of a scientific heritage that allows knowing the Dominican reality regarding the aspects addressed by health psychology, pointing out the need to assume the bio-psycho-social paradigm.
The activity started with the master conference "Towards an approach to a new medical sub-specialty: Psycho-oncology. The Crises of Discovery of a Cancer Diagnosis "dictated by the doctor Luis Emilio Montalvo, psychologist y psychiatrist, coordinator of the Mental Health Unit of the Center for Diagnosis, Advanced Medicine and Telemedicine (CEDIMAT).
Montalvo spoke about the different moods that cancer patients express upon receiving the diagnosis. He warned that there must be a clear differentiation of the normal grief that the person affected by cancer and clinical depression may have in himself.
The conduct expert noted that the optimal communication that there must be between a doctor and patient you don't learn from experience alone. "There are doctors who are old in age and in practice who are clumsy in handling this art," he said, and clarified that highly trained doctors and nurses are capable of applying therapeutic communication.
Erimar Hurtado y Mariel Ferreira, graduates of the INTEC Psychology career and members of the Arima research group, presented the preliminary results of the investigation "Interdisciplinary intervention of palliative care in the Dominican Republic and relationship between the degree of pain and the quality of life of the terminally ill patient."
From this investigation it is concluded that, apart from the Robert Reid Cabral Children's Hospital, there are no centers that have palliative care units as such. They indicated that many of the patients reported not having received information about their terminal state, and expressed that faith and spirituality are the most used coping strategy to cope with the process. They advocated the need to offer a regulatory framework for advance directives, and regretted the stagnation of the bill that was presented in Congress, due to the need to create protocols for the creation of palliative care units.
In the activity, the social psychologist Josefina Zaiter Mejía exposed about community social psychology in the Dominican Republic and how the project to create Community Health Centers in the country in the 1970s and regretted that this project, which began to bear fruit, has been abandoned.
The graduate of INTEC's Psychology career, Alma Canaan, gave the conference "The caregiver burden syndrome" and presented the Comprehensive Program for Caregivers in which aspects of physical and mental care are offered that must be taken into account by people who take care of a relative who suffers from a chronic disease, so that these are not neglected until they also become ill.
The event was led by the postgraduate coordinator of the INTEC Sciences and Humanities Area, Irene Machado, who highlighted the interest of the academy in contributing to the improvement of the health sector in the country and the academic offer of Intec, reflected in the program of Master's degree in Clinical and Health Psychology.