"We don't like to call it lying, it's just therapeutic communication": Understanding the influence of social support on coping with illness uncertainty

communication;"Alzheimers disease";uncertainty;social support;illness;health

Stone, Anne M.

关键词: communication;    "Alzheimers disease";    uncertainty;    social support;    illness;    health;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/26385/Stone_Anne.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Nursing training stresses the importance of communication in providing care to patients;however, research on communication in particular nursing contexts has trailed behind trainingprograms implemented to improve communication efforts. Training interventions are oftenlimited by a cursory understanding of what makes interactions successful versus unsuccessfuland often highlight nonverbal communication as being more important than what is actually said.This investigation explored the role of uncertainty for nurses and care assistants communicatingsupport to patients and family members coping with Alzheimer’s disease. Using Goldsmith’s(2004) normative approach to frame this study, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 32nurses and care assistants about the role of communication in the context of Alzheimer’s nursing.Each interview was transcribed verbatim and analyzed using constant comparative techniques ofgrounded theory. To determine the role of communication in nurses’ interactions withAlzheimer’s patients and their families, my analysis focused on five areas: (a) sources ofuncertainty for nurses and care assistants, (b) communicative management of uncertainty, (c)ways of communicating support to family members, (d) dilemmas of communicating support,and (e) strategies for managing communicative dilemmas perceived as effective in nursing care.The sources of uncertainty participants reported experiencing become implicated in the complexcommunication situations that that nurses and care assistants deal with in their work. Forexample, communicating various types of informational support is a strategy for managingfamily member’s uncertainty about the illness itself as well as relational questions about how torelate to their loved one in a nursing care facility. The findings from this study highlight theimportance of enacted support through communication in the context of Alzheimer’s carenursing. Practical implications of these findings for Alzheimer’s care nurses as well as nurses inother specialties are described. Theoretical implications for literature on communicating socialsupport and uncertainty management are discussed with reference to these findings, andlimitations and directions for future research are outlined.