A NUTRITIONIST FACING DEATH: AN INVISIBLE THEME IN PROFESSIONAL TRAINING

Abstract

This article aimed to analyze the curriculum matrices of undergraduate Nutrition courses in public universities in the state of Rio de Janeiro, reflecting on the teaching of death and dying. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted, based on documentary analysis and Bardin's content analysis. Data were collected from the official websites of UFRJ, UNIRIO, UERJ, and UFF between November and December 2025. The results showed a significant predominance of the biomedical (35.4% to 50.7%) and technical-operational (36.2% to 54.4%) axes, while humanities occupy only between 6.6% and 13.4% of the workload. Notably, no mandatory courses focused on finitude or Palliative Care (0.0%) were identified in any of the institutions analyzed. It is concluded that teaching about death is not institutionally incorporated into the training, configuring a curricular silence sustained by biomedical hegemony. This gap leads to professional unpreparedness and moral suffering, highlighting the urgent need for curricular reformulations that include thanatology and the ethics of care to ensure comprehensive and humanized assistance.