Continuity of nursing and the time of sickness

Past, present and future, the experience of time during examination for malignant brain tumor: a qualitative observational study

BACKGROUND

Primary malignant brain tumor is a severe disease with a poor prognosis causing reduced life expectancy and possible alteration in the perception of time. The aim of this study was to gain deeper insight into the perception of time from the perspective of patients with brain cancer as they pass through the Danish Integrated Brain Cancer Pathway at a university hospital in Denmark.

METHODS

Data were generated by shadowing six patients and relatives during their visit to and hospitalisation in a neurosurgical department.

RESULTS

Through one constructed case, three perspectives of time were identified. The patient's perception of time during his illness, the healthcare system's perception of time and, finally, an ethical time perspective. The analysis showed a discrepancy between patients' and healthcare professionals' perception of time. Furthermore, the results revealed an ethical time dimension.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings contribute to a better understanding of the perception of time among seriously ill patients and may further healthcare professionals' awareness of how to support patients in achieving a more meaningful use of their remaining lifetime.

A concept analysis about temporality and its applicability in nursing care

TOPIC

Concept analysis of temporality.

PURPOSE

To develop a comprehensive definition of temporality applicable to nursing care.

SOURCE

Published literature.

CONCLUSIONS

Temporality is a central component of our experience of the world. Phenomena such as the passage of time, time cycles, the trajectory of aging, transitions toward something, something being, and life as a limited time are integral to human experience. Temporality could be seen as lived time, and as such it is subjective time as opposed to clock time or objective time. The temporal dimensions of past, present, and future constitute the perspective of a person's temporal world.

Parents’ Experience of Time Distortion Following Diagnosis of a Serious or Lethal Fetal Anomaly

PURPOSE:To explore the experience of couples who continued pregnancy following a diagnosis of serious or lethal fetal anomaly.

STUDY DESIGN:Thirty-one male and female participants were recruited from a high-risk maternal–fetal medicine clinic in Washington State. Data were collected using in-depth interviews during pregnancy and after the birth of their baby. Transcribed interviews were thematically analyzed through the phenomenological lens of Merleau-Ponty.

FINDINGS:Participants described how time became reconfigured and reconstituted as they tried to compress a lifetime of love for their future child into a limited period. Participants’ concepts of time became distorted and were related to their perceptual lived experience rather than the schedule-filled, regimented, linear clock time that governed the health professionals.

CONCLUSION:Living in distorted time may be a mechanism parents use to cope with overwhelming and disorienting feelings when their unborn baby is diagnosed with a fetal anomaly.

The issue of life: Aristotle in nursing perspective

This paper explores the issue of life and its relevance to nursing, through Aristotle's philosophy and an Aristotelian interpretation of Nightingale's Notes on Nursing. Life as process and becoming has ontological status in Aristotle's philosophy and this dynamism is particularly relevant for nursing. The paper presents aspects of Aristotle's philosophy of life: his account of life as inherent powers of the individual, his analysis of change and time, and his understanding of sickness and health as qualitative states of living beings. It is shown how the Greek medical-philosophical tradition, continued by Galenic medicine and hygiene into modern time, influenced Nightingale's nursing. Individuals' life-maintaining metabolic relations to their surroundings are investigated through Aristotle and modern philosophy of biology and through Nightingale's nursing emphasis on the patient's relation to her or his immediate surroundings. It is argued that Nightingale's concern is really the processes of individual life, which in sickness necessitate temporally continuous nursing observation. Humans' radical dependency on their surroundings is actualized as interpersonal interdependency. The paper argues that the end of nursing care, the telos for which sake it is practised, is inherent in the individual course of the patients' life. When life processes are affected by sickness, infirmity, medical interventions or mental suffering, individuals need competent help to live - and to live as well as possible. It is suggested that the special responsibility of nursing is to facilitate, relieve and protect individual life continuously during such times.