Maria do Rosário Dias

Oncologic disease should be considered one of modern society’s dominant pathologies because of its chronicity. Estimates of a patient’s adaptation to chronicity shapes the information given to the patient, which is a powerful strategy for changing the patient’s social representation from a mere clinical case to a psychosocial being. In this article, the patient’s persona, when captured in the social processes and relations involved in therapeutic acts, is conceptualized as the main actor on the stages and sets of hospitals. The informative act, in which information is given to a patient in a hospital, allows identification of the psychosocial profile inherent in the patient’s role; this profile describes some relevant categories, among which the “informed patient” and the “uninformed patient” stand out.