Background.
Patients with lung cancer are often troubled by multiple symptoms during treatment. Patient’s Body experience and the changes in their social relationships impact on their wellbeing. It is vital to understand the lived experience of patients with lung cancer who transformed their illness distress, negative emotions, ubiquitous in human experience, into benign. or even beneficial, influences on health.
Hypotheses/Research Questions.
The purpose of this study was integrated Merleau-Ponty’s body intentionality perspective and positive emotion theory, using interpretive ethnographic method, to understand the nature of positive emotion experience and the mechanism of toward wellbeing of patients with lung cancer during the period of treatment.
Sample Characteristics and Sample Size
Participants were invited from a medical center in Taiwan. Physicians (n=1), primary nurses (n=2), patients (n=20) and their caregivers (n=5) participated into this study.
Design
Interpretive ethnographic method was used. Participating observations, focus group interview, and ethnography interviews were performed to collect data. Interpretive hermeneutic data analysis method was used to analyzed field notes.
Results
Six themes were emerged: Encountering with cancer, awareness of a different Body, positive meaning of illness, establishing body adjustment patterns, reforming self-identity and family identity, and living toward flourishing.
Scientific Contribution
The findings of this study illustrated the nature of positive emotion during the period of treatment of patients with lung cancer which was in the synchronic of patient’s Body reform, self-integration, and living toward flourishing. Furthermore, the findings provide the elements of nursing interventions to enhance positive emotion of patients with lung cancer.