Signification de l’expérience de la phase palliative du cancer, pour des personnes atteintes et leurs familles des Baléares, alors que le pronostic leur est connu
Nowadays cancer constitutes one of the most prevalent morbilty and mortality causes, representing 25% of the total mortality rate in the Spanish context. When patients and their families live through the palliative phase of cancer, they experience a great emotional shock where physical, psychological and spiritual suffering may come at play. Having health professionals inform all family members including the patient about cancer diagnosis and related prognosis is a more and more common situation encountered within Mediterranean contexts. Nevertheless, it is not yet clear how this new approach to information disclosure is experienced by family members. Thus, the goal of this phenomenological research study was to explore and further understand the meaning these families assign to the experience of living through the terminal phase of cancer of a loved one, while being all informed about the related prognosis. The findings of this study rely on in-depth interviews with four couples (patient and spouse). The data analysis, developed upon the guidance provided by Giorgi’s (1997) phenomenological method, presents two central themes that characterize the meaning of the experience of the palliative phase of cancer, when information on the poor prognosis is known both by the patient and his/her family. The first theme concerns the fact of intensively living the loss of a dreamed-of life. This first theme is mainly develop around the lived experience regarding the shock associated with the fatal prognosis, the constant feelings and emotions such as sadness, frustration, worry and uncertainty, and related to different losses, as well as the hope for an absence of suffering. The second main theme is related to the strategies developed by these couples as they face the situation and try to make their lives as manageable as possible: to gather health professionals’ information and support, to search for a certain “normality” in their everyday life, to enjoy life, to get help from relatives and friends, to keep an open cognitive and instrumental communication dynamics, to emotionally protect themselves and to imagine and construct a future time where the loved one will no longer be present.  All these elements of each family’s individual contexts transform their lived experiences into unique experiences that must be understood and respected as such by all health professionals involved. Knowledge developed by this research study will allow nurses to better understand the experience of the palliative phase of cancer for couples sharing the information on diagnosis and prognosis, aiming at improving their quality of care. Several suggestions, related the development of sounder nursing knowledge, evolve from these results in regards to the need to develop later studies that would further explore communication in the context of couple dynamics.
communication cancer family palliative phase phenomenology Spain