Biographic Rescue as a strategy to assist patients with severe neurological conditions

Abstract

This article aims to describe an occupational therapy intervention for patients with severe neurological conditions, based on biographical rescue. It was used records and fi eld diaries of
the fi rst author. The concept of Comprehensive Care is the main reference, designed as care interested in the existential sense of the illness process. It seeks to rescue the subjectivity of these people, understood as a way of organizing all the different experiences in life, from their relations with meaning. The assisted population refers to those who have suffered great loss of its functionality (motor and cognitive), from neurological affections, especially persons in a persistent vegetative state and minimally conscious state. Memory, history, identity, dignity, subjectivity specify the practice of occupational therapist, regardless of neurological
reactions presented by the patients, as someone who helps reconstruct the meanings of the daily life of person with so severe disability.