The client´s privacy at intensive care and implications for nursing practice

Resumo

Objective: to identify how the issues related to client’s privacy in the provision of caring at intensive care have been addressed by nurses. Methods: this is an exploratory review research, about the scientific production of nursing on the privacy of client critical in intensive care. We considered articles published from 1996 to 2008, using the descriptors: Caution, Privacy, Body exposure, Nursing and Intensive care. The results were analyzed and discussed in a Multireferenciality context. Results: the client’s privacy at intensive care seems to be still, a nurse's concern, which may have ethical and legal implications and techniques, thus compromising the nursing of care and giving room for it to be labeled as inhumane. Conclusion: the study has implications for the practice of care that need to be discussed among the nurses. We must think not only the importance of the rationality of technical and scientific knowledge as foundations and cornerstones of the nursing care in intensive care, but also the subjectivity that is closed in all the actions of caring. Descriptors: privacy; nursing care; intensive therapy.