Search

Background and aim: The aim of the present article was to elaborate on a research approach and method called 'lifeworld hermeneutics'. Significant to lifeworld hermeneutics is that interpretation is the main methodological instrument for explaining and understanding existential research questions and lived experiences. From a caring science perspective, this often refers to research that aims to gain a deeper understanding of existential phenomena and issues, such as existential meaning of health, well‐being, homelessness, lostness, suffering and ageing, as well as what it means to experience unhealthiness and illness, the need for care, and caring that responds to such needs. Design: Theoretical paper. Result: The article briefly covers ontology and epistemology that clarifies the meaning and importance of a lifeworld hermeneutic attitude. This is followed by suggestions for how to perform a lifeworld hermeneutic study, expressed in relation to methodological principles for the interpretation, validation and structuring of interpretations. Thereafter, follow reflections on how to use theoretical or philosophical support to develop and deepen existential interpretations. The findings of lifeworld hermeneutic research consist of existential interpretations where the researcher, with an open and pliable attitude towards the phenomenon and the aim of the study, clarifies, explains and suggests new ways of understanding participants' lived experiences; the researcher should maintain such an attitude towards their understanding of the phenomenon as well. Conclusion: The lifeworld hermeneutical approach and method described in this article makes it possible to further deepen the understanding and knowledge about existential issues that is relevant for caring and caring science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim and objective: To describe the meaning of the phenomenon home care from the perspective of older persons who live alone with multimorbidity. Background: In line with worldwide changing demographics, conditions for older people in need of home care are changing. In Sweden there is a stay‐in‐place policy and older people are expected to live and be cared for in their own home as long as possible. Home care, instituted by different laws, is a challenge affecting the older person when the private home becomes a workplace. Design: This study uses a qualitative design with a lifeworld approach. Methods: The study having been conducted in Sweden in 2016, the researchers interviewed 12 older persons that live alone and receive home care. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The findings illustrate four sub‐themes: adapting to a caring culture, feeling exposed, unable to influence care and forced relations. The overall theme reveals that older people experience a life‐changing situation when receiving home care and they become a guest in their own home. Conclusions: Becoming older with increased needs means to disrupt one's life when one's private home becomes a public arena. The gap between an older person's rights by law and the older person's experiences of receiving home care needs to be highlighted to meet the oncoming challenges in providing a home care that includes participation of the older themselves. Only then can care be offered that enables older people to have a sense of control and experience their home as their own. Implications for practice: The findings emphasise the need to view older people as being self‐determinant and independent. Older people receiving home care need to be seen as individuals, and their entire life situation should be considered by also acknowledging the important role played by relatives and caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the lived experiences of individuals who are suffering from recurrent depression. Open interviews were conducted in Sweden with ten participants aged 19-67. Guided by the phenomenological method of Giorgi, data were analyzed within a Reflective Lifeworld Approach. The findings revealed a pattern of meaning, described as being alienated from oneself and others. Depression is described as an insidious disorder and participants described their experiences variously as elusive, extensive, complex, contradictory, paradoxical and stated that depression pervaded the person's whole lifeworld, involved both body and soul, and affected relationships with others. Relationships with others could be the reason for both wanting to live or to die. How best to confirm this form of suffering is something of a challenge to mental health care professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The majority of new mothers in Sweden initiate breastfeeding and many experience initial difficulties. This experience is an important cause of early breastfeeding cessation. To increase understanding, there is a need to explore the lived experiences of the decision to continue or cease breastfeeding. The aim of this study is therefore to explain and understand how this decision is influenced by the meaning of severe initial difficulties. Methods: A lifeworld hermeneutical approach was used for the study. The study was conducted in Sweden with eight mothers who experienced severe difficulties with initial breastfeeding. All except one were interviewed on two different occasions resulting in fifteen interviews. The interviews were conducted between 2010 and 2013. Results: Mothers who experience severe difficulties with initial breastfeeding feel both overtaken and violated not only by their own infants and their own bodies but also by their anger, expectations, loneliness and care from health professionals. These feelings of being overtaken and invaded provoke an existential crisis and place mothers at a turning point in which these feelings are compared and put in relation to one another in the negotiation of the decision to continue or cease breastfeeding. This decision thus depends on the possibility of feeling secure with the breastfeeding relationship. If insecurity dominates, this can, in severe cases, create a feeling of fear of breastfeeding that is so great that there is no alternative but to stop breastfeeding. Conclusions: Existential security in the breastfeeding relationship seems to be an underlying factor for confidence and therefore a necessary condition for continued breastfeeding when having severe initial breastfeeding difficulties. Unresolved feelings of insecurity may be a serious barrier to further breastfeeding that can result in a fear of breastfeeding. Such fear can force the mother to cease breastfeeding. This study highlights how women are situated in a complex cultural and biological context of breastfeeding that has existential consequences for them. An existential crisis forces mothers into a turning point for the breastfeeding decision. In the existential crisis, mothers' responsibility for the mother-infant relationship guides continuing or ceasing breastfeeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objectives: The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of self-treatment for anogenital warts from the perspective of a group of young women who received it. Study design: Ten young Swedish women were interviewed in the study, aged between16 and 21. The young women had been diagnosed with anogenital warts and self-managed their treatment with 0.5% podophyllotoxin solution. Results: Self-management using 0.5% podophyllotoxin solution poses numerous difficulties. The nature of the treatment as a topical liquid is particularly testing for young women in terms of both application and genital pain, with implications for continuation of the treatment regime. The self-treatment challenges both personal integrity as well as interpersonal relations and creates a personal responsibility which appears to be somewhat overwhelming at times. Conclusions: Health care professionals need to recognize the challenge that self-treatment poses to their clients. The issues that create difficulty in relation to topical liquid treatment regimes and importantly can lead to poor adherence to the treatment regime and discontinuation could easily be overcome by the use of different preparations. Continuity of care provider across treatments and alternative mechanisms of support would not only address some of the aspects that young women raise as particularly embarrassing and shameful, but also improve quality of care and increase general satisfaction with service provision. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose: Patients must be able to feel as much trust for caregivers and the healthcare system at the healthcare centre as at the emergency department. The aim of this study is to explain and understand the phenomenon of trust in the early chain of healthcare, when a patient has called an ambulance for a non-urgent condition and been referred to the healthcare centre. Method: A lifeworld hermeneutic approach from the perspective of caring science was used. Ten patients participated: seven female and three male. The setting is the early chain of healthcare in south-western Sweden. Results: The findings show that the phenomenon of trust does not automatically involve medical care. However, attention to the patient’s lifeworld in a professional caring relationship enables the patient to trust the caregiver and the healthcare environment. It is clear that the “voice of the lifeworld” enables the patient to feel trust. Conclusion: Trust in the early chain of healthcare entails caregivers’ ability to pay attention to both medical and existential issues in compliance with the patient’s information and questions. Thus, the patient must be invited to participate in assessments and decisions concerning his or her own healthcare, in a credible manner and using everyday language. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using a life-world hermeneutic approach, this study focused on the interviews with eight Swedish men living with genital warts. The men expressed a need for control over their situation, a control that was easier to maintain if the warts were invisible. Some of the men expressed prejudiced attitudes toward those who contract a venereal infection and their own feelings of shame appeared to correlate with these prejudices. In their meetings with health care providers, the men viewed a competent health care provider as someone who combined professional distance with a personal approach. Finally, the fact that men saw themselves as disease carriers was of great significance to them and influenced their views of future meaningful relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]