Discharge by request: study on the perception of patients and professional

Abstract Discharge by request generates ethical and legal dilemmas in the day-to-day of a hospital. This study analyses the perception of patients and the multi professional team (doctors, nurses, social workers and psychologists) on discharge by request in a public maternity hospital in Fortaleza, Ceará. It is a documentary and bibliographic study that consists of a qualitative descriptive research , using simple observation and semi-structured interviews with 16 participants (eight professionals and eight patients) and content analysis based on Bardin’s model. As a result of the axes of analysis in the process of discharge by request, it was found that from the professionals viewpoint the reason why patients ask for discharge by request is lack of family support; now, for the patients, fatigue and hospital stress are the main reasons why they ask for discharge by request. We conclude that to understand the perspective of the patient who asks for discharge by request, beyond its legal aspects, that is, in the validation of their autonomy, is a challenge for professional teams who act in the context of hospitalisation.