Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences

Lung cancer is a disease with many biomedical and psychological symptoms. The diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer induces adverse effects. Having an inoperable lung cancer there are few possibilities of being cured. Management of patients with inoperable disease is directed at relieving local or systemic symptoms. The purpose of this study is to describe how it affects the patients' life situation and quality of life. Data was collected by qualitative interviews where the patient's lived experiences were articulated. Twenty-three Swedish patients diagnosed and starting palliative treatment for inoperable lung cancer were interviewed. The interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Data were interpreted trough interpretive phenomenology. Six themes were identified that were important for the informants' experience of their life situation and quality of life. The themes were: Experience of uncertainty; including time of waiting and thoughts, experience of hope; about a prolonged life, network as support; being treated as the person they are thoughts of death; is there time to conclude their lives?, feelings of shame and guilt; they have caused the disease by themselves and next of kin reactions; sadness, guilt, worries and anger. These six themes gave a structure presenting the essence: Living as usual. Maintaining independency and integrity were important, as well as maintaining status, being treated as the person they always had been and that they experience that they had a meaning to fulfill in life. They were living as usual.

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the experiences of quality of life/life situation among those who were next of kin to persons with inoperable lung cancer. Data were collected in qualitative interviews, where 11 next of kin articulated their lived experiences, and were interpreted through interpretive phenomenology. Four themes were identified: changed life situation, experiences of uncertainty due to awareness of the ill person"s changed health status, interpersonal relationships, and false hopes due to health care professionals" treatment. These four themes gave a structure presenting the essence: balancing a changed life situation. The findings of the study point out the importance of promoting support for the next of kin, since they are significantly affected by the changed life situation.

Palliative care seeks to enhance quality of life in the face of death by addressing the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs of patients with advanced disease. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether palliative patients' needs, nursing actions, and evaluation can be identified in the nursing documentation. Data consisted of reviews of patients' case records in a palliative care unit. Data were analyzed using content analysis and counting frequency of keywords used from the Well-being Integrity Prevention and Safety (VIPS) model, followed by an inductive analysis of the case record documentation aiming to identify palliative care components. The result shows that the documentation revealed physical care, especially pain, more frequently than other needs. Nursing documentation focuses on identification more than on nursing actions and evaluation.

The purpose of this study was, using secondary analysis on data collected from previous empirical studies, to focus on improving the quality of life due to the new possibilities for living after a cancer diagnosis. No matter how long or short the life will be, quality of life in palliative care is about ''living in the best way'' until death. The data analysis identified 4 main themes; death as a main concern, reevaluating life, living a normal life with support, and living until death. The key message is that the patients are living until they die. Palliative care should facilitate and support the patients in their new life situation in order to sustain their quality of life. They are still alive-living until death.

Palliative care describes a caring philosophy. Originally, palliative care referred exclusively to the care of dying cancer patients, but over time has expanded to include mitigating care of all dying people whatever the diagnosis. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of palliative care according to the experience of district nurses in Sweden. Six district nurses were interviewed, and the transcripts were analyzed using Giorgi's phenomenology. The essence of the caring philosophy for the nurses in the study was identified as commitment, underscored by four themes: challenge, control, frustration, and relationships. These findings indicate that district nurses must be offered resources and education in order to be able to fulfill their commitment, i.e., to supply good palliative care.

The purpose was to investigate whether screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm and the finding of an enlarged aorta in those men causes worries and affects the life-situation. Men at the age of 65 years were invited to ultrasound screening and they who had an enlarged aorta ...

To identify and describe the experience of being a professional patient (PP) in teaching the pelvic examination (PE). Qualitative study using in-depth interviews. Participant's home, place of work or other place of choice. Thirteen female PPs who teach the PE to medical students and student midwives. Semi-structured interviews analysed with an interpretive phenomenological approach. Five themes were identified during the analysis: 'embodied knowledge', 'promoting a proper approach', 'redrawing private boundaries', 'feeling confident' and 'doing something meaningful'. The essence 'experience of stronger and clearer perception of self' emerged from the themes and is the described structure of the lived experience of the women who are PP. Being a PP in this setting was beneficial for the women. They acquired increased knowledge about their bodies and PE procedure, which led to a new awareness of their own body. Contributing to students' learning in such an intimate examination procedure was rewarding and increased self-esteem.

There has been a great deal of qualitative research conducted that has examined the impact of breast cancer on the Self, however, there has been little effort to analyze these findings from a meta-perspective. This study sought to fill this gap by conducting a meta-synthesis of the qualitative research on breast cancer and its treatments affecting the Self. Meta-method and meta-synthesis techniques were used to integrate findings across 30 qualitative research reports conducted between 1990 and 2003 with a total of 795 women, from several different countries.The fusions identified from this meta-synthesis revealed 4 aspects of the Self affected by the diagnosis of breast cancer and its treatment: awareness of their own mortality, living with an uncertain certainty, attachment validation, and redefinition of Self. These findings were validated through use of a comparison study. The women adapt to being a breast cancer patient; redefining their lives and their self. This study highlights the existential process that women of many cultures move through as they incorporate the meaning of breast cancer into their lives. Nurses who are aware of these processes are better able to link women with resources to help them in their adaptation to living with breast cancer.

uring the latest decades the structure of the population has changed, and the share of older people is increasing. Since the risk of falling ill with a disease increases with age, the number of patients also increases. Treatment , such as technical and medical, may prolong people's survival. 1 Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in Sweden today, closely followed by cancer. The medicaltechnical development during the years has improved cure and Patients' Experiences of Palliative Care in the Home

The diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer induces adverse effects. In this interpretive phenomenological study, 11 Brazilian women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer were interviewed. Data included audiotaped interviews where the women's lived experiences were articulated. Data were interpreted through Heidegger's existential phenomenology. Themes that were found were interrelated and presented the essential structure of the essence the women were living-living side by side with the phantom of death. The 4 themes that were interpreted and identified were as follows: gaining a positive attitude for life, wanting to be recognized as a woman with certain needs, considering body image/self-image, and making efforts to hide. The findings of the study point out the importance of the fact that illness elicits more than fitting the body into traditional community expectations or surrendering the body to professional medicine. Even with all the deep changes in their lives and changed life priorities, the women want to carry on and live the best life they could. To put this idea in the front line makes the difference for the transition of these women.

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe how sexually abused children experience the legal process, a process that includes being questioned by the police during the preliminary investigation and by lawyers and the prosecutor in the courtroom, and meeting other professionals from various agencies. Method: Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 children-9 girls and 1 boy between 9 and 15 years old-who had experienced child sexual abuse (CSA). The interviews were semi structured and carried out and analyzed by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The aim of IPA is to explore the participants' views of the world and to adopt as far as possible an "insider perspective." IPA draws on a tradition of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism in attempting to understand how people make sense of their experiences. Results: Five major themes emerged through the analysis: not being believed, making CSA visible, need for support, sanctions for offenders, and lack of respect for the child's integrity. Almost all the children had a feeling of not being believed. They described feelings ranging from anxiety to dread and even terror when they had to describe the CSA they had experienced. Even though the importance of support for such children is already well understood, the children stated that the support they were given was not sufficient. The children said that they wanted support from a single professional who was well informed about both the legal process and CSA. When the children were asked to reflect on sanctions against the abusers, they said that it was important that the perpetrator got treatment/therapy but they also said that imprisonment was desirable. Financial compensation was not as important to them; the damage had been done and money could not compensate for that damage. The children also said that both the lawyers and the media had treated them with disrespect. Conclusions: It is valuable for children who have been exposed to CSA to learn that they can take part in the legal process as equal partners with the other participants, and it is evident that the quality of psychological care and support needs to be improved. The children want to be participants in the legal process rather than passive objects of that process.

Background: Due to the armed conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s many families escaped to other countries. The main goal of this study was to explore in more detail the complexity of various family members' experiences and perceptions from their life before the war, during the war and the escape, and during their new life in Sweden. There is insufficient knowledge of refugee families' perceptions, experiences and needs, and especially of the complexity of family perspectives and family systems. This study focused on three families from Bosnia and Herzegovina who came to Sweden and were granted permanent residence permits. The families had at least one child between 5 and 12 years old. Method: Family therapy sessions were videotaped and verbatim transcriptions were made. Nine family therapy sessions were analysed using a qualitative method with directed content analysis. Results: Three main categories and ten subcategories were found -1. Everyday life at home, with two subcategories: The family, Work and School/preschool; 2. The influence of war on everyday life, with three subcategories: The war, The escape, Reflections; 3. The new life, with five subcategories: Employment, Health, Relatives and friends, Limited future, Transition to the new life.

Primary health care teams are the teams responsible nowadays in Sweden for the greater part of the home health care system, providing palliative care in the patient's home. If palliative care in the home is to be ethically defensible, it should be voluntary from the point of view of the next of kin and should be designed in such a way that he or she receives different forms of support during the care period. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of palliative care in the home as experienced by the next of kin. The data consist of transcripts from interviews with the next of kin. Giorgi's phenomenological method was selected as the method/analysis for this study, because it focuses on uncovering the meaning of experiences of the participants by studying descriptions from their perspective. A feeling of insufficiency is the phenomenon, which permeates all the five themes: adjustment, awareness, being perceived as a person, emotional effects and feelings of uncertainty. Because the informal carer/next of kin is a significant contributor to palliative care in the home, it is important to promote feelings of control and also self-efficacy.

The underlying causes of metabolic syndrome (MS) are uncertain. Knowledge from those who have experience of this syndrome should provide new insight. The aim was to explore the meaning and consequences of MS. Thirteen Swedish adults with MS, aged between 33 and 82 years, were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed using constant comparative analysis, which is the basis of grounded theory. The core category for the meaning and consequences of having the risk factors of MS consisted of the recurrence of behavior. The participants attempted to balance their insight into the causes and consequences by referring to their normal life, lifestyle, and fatalistic approach to life. Attention needs to be paid to the attitudes of the individuals with MS, as well as the known risk factors and their consequences, in order to facilitate a long-term lifestyle change in these individuals.

Myocardial infarction is the most common cause of death in Sweden today and is responsible for approximately 30% of all deaths. The aim of this study was to obtain increased knowledge and understanding of what motive power is and how it affects the individual's rehabilitation and return to a functioning daily life. Thirteen patients, six females and seven males, who had experienced a myocardial infarction, aged between 39 and 72 years and with a minimum interval from myocardial infarction diagnosis of at least 12 months, were interviewed. Grounded theory was the method used for data collection and analysis, since the method is focusing on social processes and interaction. The analysis process identified motive power as a core category: zest for life. The participants expressed a desire and a longing to continue living. The participants' experiences of their disease as well as being discharged from hospital forced them to reorientation. Autonomy, the individual's own active decision-making, plays a significant role in this zest for life. Care for was identified as the support base for zest for life. As health-care professionals we must, at a very early stage on the ward, form an idea of what kind of patient we have in front of us.