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
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The illness experiences of patients following surgery for colorectal
cancer – a phenomenological investigation.
Barbara Worster PhD, BSc (Hons), PGCE, RGN, RCNT,
Senior Lecturer
Department of Nursing and Applied Clinical Studies
Canterbury Christ Church University
North Holmes Road
Canterbury
Kent, CT1 1QU
England
Tel No =44(0) 1227 782800
Email barbaraworster@canterbury.ac.uk
‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in
having new eyes’
(Marcel Proust)
Background and Context
Colorectal Cancer is the 4th most common cancer throughout world
(WHO, 2003). The incidence of and deaths from this cancer are
generally increasing most of all in the developed world and urban
areas of the developed world (World Cancer Research Fund, 2003).
It is a common tumour in both sexes and is closely associated with
advancing age. There are over 30,000 new cases diagnosed each
year (WCRF, 2003), this means on average 650 patients are told
every week they have bowel cancer. Consequently many health
care professionals will have contact with individuals suffering from
this disease.
Cancer is a disease, which can be addressed in terms of
pathogenesis, pathology and responsiveness to forms of
intervention. It is also a series of experiences that profoundly
affect the person who has the cancer and those who share the
illness experience (Carnevali and Reiner, 1990). In the twentieth
century, health care in the developed world has changed
dramatically. Rapidly growing basic medical sciences have provided
an ever more complex understanding of the body in health and
illness. At the same time increasingly sophisticated diagnostic and
therapeutic facilities have become available. Knowledge and
technique have combined to transform medicine to the status of a
technological science. However, according to Little, Jordons, Paul
and Montgomery (1998), because of its reductionist tendency,
conventional medical understanding typically fails to capture the
embodied experience of illness.
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