Abstract
It is a research project that has been developed at Santa Maria University Hospital (HUSM), aiming to identify the coping strategies that patients use when referred for Cardiac Surgery. The data will be collected in the cardiac pre-surgery period through a questionnaire, intending to characterize the participants; besides using the Coping Inventory instrument – Jalowiec – to identify the coping styles that the participants use against the stressors confront. From the coping process identification of the patients who were referred for cardiac surgery, it will be possible to analyze and base the professionals’ actions who deal with these patients, aiming to attend the emotional and physiological adaptation demands to the surgical process.