Miriam Leal studied medicine at the Escola Superior em Ciências da Saúde (ESCS), pediatrics at the Hospital Materno-Infantil de Brasília (HMIB), a master’s degree in Health Sciences from ESCS and is currently studying for a doctorate in Psychology at the Catholic University of Brasília.

At the same time as developing her academic career teaching pediatrics at the Centro Universitário de Brasília (Ceub), she has been providing medical assistance for more than 10 years in the Neonatology Unit at HMIB, a place that sparked the researcher’s passion for babies with congenital malformations and their caregivers, who reconcile their factual or religious beliefs with their experiences in the neonatology environment.

Reconciling her professional career, the researcher also ventured into motherhood so that empathy could go beyond evidence-based science and be experienced in the difficulties that all women experience in the various daily journeys that move between individuality, family and work. This would enable them to carry out their work activities with greater existential meaning.

The researcher used epistemological currents such as rationalism and phenomenology to produce clinical, epidemiological, psychological and spiritual evidence in the field of the integral health of patients, companions and professionals from a hospital and university perspective.