Eva Vikhe Patil, Anna Forsberg, Carina Wennerholm, Jenny Drott
{"title":"\"It Is What It Is\" - The Lived Experience of Women With Breast Cancer Undergoing Axillary Lymph Node Dissection.","authors":"Eva Vikhe Patil, Anna Forsberg, Carina Wennerholm, Jenny Drott","doi":"10.17294/2330-0698.2072","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The lived experience of women undergoing axillary procedures as part of their breast cancer (BC) treatment remains unexplored. This lack of in-depth understanding could hamper implementation of person-centred care, which is concerning because BC is the most common form of cancer in women. The aim of this study was therefore to explore the lived experiences of women undergoing axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) due to BC.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Twelve women with a mean age of 59 years were interviewed about their lived experiences of axillary procedures as part of their BC treatment. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutical method. This narrative method enabled the researchers to reinterpret the worlds of the women with BC, as reflected in the data.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The naïve understanding, ie, the meaning of the text as a whole, revealed that the participants were in a process of accepting and adapting to their life after ALND involving adjuvant chemotherapy and/or hormonal therapy. Thus, six main themes emerged in the thematic structural analysis illustrating the meaning of acceptance and adaptation when suffering from BC and undergoing a treatment trajectory, ie, establishing coherence, adjusting to treatment, safeguarding social belonging, re-defining oneself, feeling vulnerable, and accepting one's circumstances.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>If healthcare professionals provided structure and consistency, the women's treatment and lived experiences made sense; the women experienced more certainty, freedom, and meaningful social interactions. Uncertainty occurred when the women became lost in their own sense-making process, leading to low self-efficacy. There is a need for a paradigm shift in surgical care from viewing women with BC as anatomical constructions in need of repair to deeply understanding that they are persons with an illness who require ongoing self-management support.</p>","PeriodicalId":16724,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews","volume":"11 3","pages":"222-230"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11493309/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.17294/2330-0698.2072","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Purpose: The lived experience of women undergoing axillary procedures as part of their breast cancer (BC) treatment remains unexplored. This lack of in-depth understanding could hamper implementation of person-centred care, which is concerning because BC is the most common form of cancer in women. The aim of this study was therefore to explore the lived experiences of women undergoing axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) due to BC.
Methods: Twelve women with a mean age of 59 years were interviewed about their lived experiences of axillary procedures as part of their BC treatment. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutical method. This narrative method enabled the researchers to reinterpret the worlds of the women with BC, as reflected in the data.
Results: The naïve understanding, ie, the meaning of the text as a whole, revealed that the participants were in a process of accepting and adapting to their life after ALND involving adjuvant chemotherapy and/or hormonal therapy. Thus, six main themes emerged in the thematic structural analysis illustrating the meaning of acceptance and adaptation when suffering from BC and undergoing a treatment trajectory, ie, establishing coherence, adjusting to treatment, safeguarding social belonging, re-defining oneself, feeling vulnerable, and accepting one's circumstances.
Conclusions: If healthcare professionals provided structure and consistency, the women's treatment and lived experiences made sense; the women experienced more certainty, freedom, and meaningful social interactions. Uncertainty occurred when the women became lost in their own sense-making process, leading to low self-efficacy. There is a need for a paradigm shift in surgical care from viewing women with BC as anatomical constructions in need of repair to deeply understanding that they are persons with an illness who require ongoing self-management support.
目的:作为乳腺癌(BC)治疗的一部分,接受腋窝手术的妇女的生活经历仍未得到研究。由于乳腺癌是女性最常见的癌症,这种缺乏深入了解的情况可能会阻碍以人为本的护理的实施,这一点令人担忧。因此,本研究旨在探讨因 BC 而接受腋窝淋巴结清扫术(ALND)的女性的生活经历:对 12 名平均年龄为 59 岁的妇女进行了访谈,了解她们在接受 BC 治疗过程中接受腋窝淋巴结清扫术的经历。研究人员对访谈进行了录音、逐字记录,并采用现象学诠释学方法对访谈内容进行了分析。这种叙事方法使研究人员能够重新解释数据中所反映的患有乳腺癌的妇女的世界:天真的理解,即文本的整体意义,揭示了参与者在接受和适应涉及辅助化疗和/或激素治疗的 ALND 后的生活的过程。因此,在主题结构分析中出现了六大主题,即建立连贯性、适应治疗、保护社会归属感、重新定义自我、感觉脆弱和接受自己的处境,这六大主题说明了在罹患 BC 并接受治疗的过程中接受和适应的意义:如果医护人员能够提供结构性和一致性,妇女的治疗和生活经历就会变得有意义;妇女就会体验到更多的确定性、自由和有意义的社会交往。当妇女们迷失在自己的感性认识过程中时,就会产生不确定性,从而导致低自我效能感。外科护理的模式需要转变,从将 BC 妇女视为需要修复的解剖结构,转变为深刻理解她们是需要持续自我管理支持的疾病患者。