Ampliando horizontes de vida (AHVI): Estrategia de intervención del Trabajo Social para adolescentes trasplantados por enfermedad renal crónica terminal

Abstract

UNICEF points out that the main detected problems in Mexican teenagers are: Dropping out
from school, exploitation, addictions such as smoking and alcoholism, delinquency, premature
pregnancies, abortions, migration, and finally mortality. This article analyzes the situation
of 87 adolescents with Chronic Terminal Kidney Disease (CTKD), who were kidney-transplanted
in a hospital of third level care. The two triggering intervention questions are: How
to reach his / her life as a responsible, autonomous and independent key-transplanted social
subject from the sick dependent teenager, through the integral development?, and what
should be the best way to reinforce the affective and functional social relationships which
allow the post-transplanted teenager or adolescent patient (as well as his/her family) from
a co-dependency and exclusion to an autonomy and inclusion states? The diagnostic conclusion
stage gives us the base for building a significant change and also for resignifying
the disease as a simple new reality. The two central emphasized issues on this study are,
firstly, the Social Worker intervention applying the Tello-Ornelas’ methodology, based on
the fact that adolescents with ESRD are isolated, feel both excluded and not taken into account
during their substitution treatment (pre-transplant). Secondly, CTKD adolescent family
members facing a chronic disease must act as a whole group instead of isolated members.
Our approach includes the following stages: Diagnostic conclusion, conceptual construction
of the change and reconceptualization of the problem situation. The socio-demographic
profile and the answers of the interviews constitute the qualitative part.