Patients' Experience of Hospitalization for Surgery: Implications for Nursing Care (Phenomenology, Human Science).

Abstract

The need to underst and the way patients' view the care they receive is important if we are to improve that care. Florence Nightingale was among the first to make this point. She also said it was difficult to obtain this information. This study was done to obtain a better underst and ing of how surgical patients experience hospitilization. I conducted a Human Science, phenomenologically based study. I interviewed nine men and women about their hospitilization for surgery. In addition I also analyzed my own hospitalization experience. Three common themes emerged from these interviews: the need to know and the fear of knowing; the fear of death; and the impact of caring. The importance of these themes was confirmed both by their appearance in this study across a diversity of different surgical procedures in different hospitals and by their appearance in a thematic analysis of articles in 84 years of nursing journals. The implications of these findings for the education of nurses and their practice is presented.Ph.D.NursingUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160109/1/8422211.pd