Considering that comfort and discomfort must be understood in the light of patients' interactions during illness and treatment- thus linked to institutions' objective factors, grounding rationale, and practices -, this study inquired on comfort and discom-fort such as experienced by men who had suffered acute myocardial infarction (AMI). By resorting to the Symbolic Interactionismand to Grounded Theory methodology, data were collected by means of interviews with 13 men who had suffered AMI, at twohealth units in the city of São Paulo. The analysis led to building a theoretical model of such experience, made up by threephenomena and essentially pervaded by the discomfort of "undergoing loss of spontaneous action". This articles sums up thebasic psychosocial process that emerges from that experience, and discusses its implications to question the clinical model oftreatment, pointing to prevention as a further scope of action for nurses, besides raising issues to enhance nurse education.
Comfort care; Myocardial infarction; Social interaction; Interpersonal relations
