Many persons age 65 and over enter the hospital each year. There is substantial literature on the incidence and prevention of various problems that occur during hospitalization with this population, e.g., falls and acute confusion. However, information about the hospitalized elder patient's perceptions of the experience of hospitalization is lacking--especially for the patient diagnosed with cancer. It is impossible to truly know another's experience because each person is an individual, and every individual has a personal history and future. This history and future play into perceptions, expectations, and experiences to make the experience unique--thus the value of examining experiences from the patient's perspective.
Following approval of the Dissertation Committee and the Institutional Review Board, I enlisted the help of local oncology practices to recruit participants to the study. All participants had been hospitalized in the 12 month period preceding the study; all were age 65 or over. Participants self-selected by responding to letters mailed from physicians' offices or to fliers posted in their physician's office. I used phenomenology to examine the experience of 10 patients with cancer during hospitalization. Following informed consent, I interviewed patients in their home. The interview consisted of an open-ended question, "Tell me what it's like to be in the hospital," and open-ended prompts. Interviews were tape-recorded; the tapes were transcribed by professionals. I reviewed the transcripts for accuracy, immersed myself in the data, and coded the data into themes representing the essential parts of the life world: body, space, time, and relationship. Data was further coded into sub-themes to facilitate reflection on the data to arrive at the essence of the experience of hospitalization. Losses permeated the experience of hospitalization, and loss was deemed to be the essence of the hospitalization experience for elders with cancer.
A discussion of the impact of loss, the ways in which hospitals could change to improve the experience of hospitalization, and the participant's perception that nurses were too busy to develop relationships, along with implications for nursing and suggestions for future research concludes this dissertation.
Keywords . Phenomenology, Hospitalization, Elders, Cancer, Loss
My Research