Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
vulnerable about planning the future and lacking confidence about
making plans.
� Loss of sense of future – present ‘tense’
� Grief for preferred future
� Sense of life being on hold/changed forever
� Fear of moving forward/making plans
� Fear of recurrence/death
� Loss of narrative ‘desire’
� Living with less and loss
LOWERED LIFE TONE
Many women felt that it was hard to be optimistic or to feel positive.
Fear of recurrence was a strong feature in most stories. Some felt
‘cancer came first’ and dictated lifestyle choices.
LOSS OF VALUED LIFE ROLES
Many roles had been sacrificed. Those who had lost a work role felt
the loss particularly strongly, especially the social aspect associated
with employment.
SECRET BURDENS
Stories emerged of unshared burdens such as worries, high
expressed emotion in home and relationships, struggles with poor
coping strategies, sadness at contraction of social world and
concerns with regard to intimacy. In some cases, the women felt
that it would be unfair to burden others with such matters.
RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS
The narrative approach is a useful and viable tool to extract the
deep personal experiences of women living with breast cancer.
Respondents found story-telling easy, attractive and nonintimidating.
Telling their own stories in their own words was seen to value and
privilege their interpretation of life events.
Story-telling may have distinctive advantages in sensitive psychooncology
based research.
CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
Results to date indicate the importance of holistic and
phenomenological examination of individual contexts of breast
cancer patients.
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