Perceptions, meanings and adaptations to hemodialysis as a liminal space: The patient perspective

Abstract

This study presents an ethnographic view about the experience of people who depend on hemodialysis to survive. The investigation focused on patients, their perceptions and experiences, based on their relationship with the disease and coping strategies, given that the specificities of this type of treatment originate a complex process, followed by contradictions and ambiguities. The interviewees, who were aged between 18 and 70 years and had been on this treatment over a year, revealed having lives marked by the disease experience and statements which make hemodialysis to be construed as a liminality space. The study, grounded on the anthropological theory, and some of the reports by the 117 interviewees developed the interpretation that every patient with chronic kidney disease who depends on hemodialysis lives in a liminal space that can last months or years.