The context of health care communication in chronic illness

2004 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally E. Thorne ◽  
Susan R. Harris ◽  
Karen Mahoney ◽  
Andrea Con ◽  
Liza McGuinness
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Health Care Communication

Prognosticating futures and the human experience of hope

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Thorne ◽  
Valerie Oglov ◽  
Elizabeth-Anne Armstrong ◽  
T. Gregory Hislop
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Clinical Encounter ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Health Care Communication ◽  
Patients With Cancer

Objectives: Communication between health care providers and patients with cancer and other chronic diseases typically references probabilities that certain future events will or will not occur. Beyond the context of diagnostic encounters and the transmission of “bad news,” such “prognostic” communications take place in various forms throughout the illness trajectory. It is well known that such information transmitted badly can have devastating psychosocial consequences for patients and their families and, conversely, that difficult information exchanged with sensitivity can lend tremendous support. This study aimed to extend our understanding of how such communications are received and interpreted by patients, so that we might optimally apply what we know about general principles of effective communication within the particularly challenging context of predicting futures.Methods: We conducted a combined secondary analysis of two prior qualitative studies into patient perceptions of helpful and unhelpful health care communication with 200 cancer patients and 30 persons with chronic illness. These data sets offered a rich resource for comparing perceptions across a range of contextual variables, and secondary analysis focused on future-oriented interactions, including both prognostication and prediction.Results: The accounts of patients with cancer and chronic illness reveal various ways in which health care communications involving future projections interact with their human experience of hope, powerfully shaping their capacity to make sense of and live with serious illness. They include a synthesis of what patients recommend health care professionals know and understand about this challenging dynamic.Significance of results: The findings of this study offer a distinct angle of vision onto the various communications that involve future predictions, illuminating a patient perspective with the potential to inform health care communication approaches that are both informative and therapeutic. As such, the study supports a dynamic understanding of the tenuous balance between hope and honesty in the clinical encounter.

Post Your Journey: Instagram as a Support Community for People With Fibromyalgia

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley A. Berard ◽  
André P. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Health Care Systems ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Widespread Pain ◽  
Care Systems ◽  
Media Applications

Fibromyalgia is a chronic illness with primary symptoms of widespread pain and fatigue. Social media applications have become a recent resource allowing individuals with fibromyalgia to interact in a virtual community devoted to the illness. This study explores how such a community develops and maintains itself on Instagram and the ways it creates social capital for its users. Data are derived from Instagram posts and open-ended questionnaires completed by users living with fibromyalgia who use the application. Using content analysis and semiotic methodology, the study analyzes the diverse ways in which users shared their experiences with fibromyalgia, the management of its symptoms, and issues encountered in accessing health care systems. Instagram aids in the development of a community by facilitating intimate and supportive interactions about the illness and the creation of personalized day-to-day narratives accessible to all. Norms of trust, acceptance, and reciprocity characterize the diversity of interactions in this community.

INTRODUCTION

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. ii-ii
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Child Development ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Full Account

In June 1992, 35 health care professionals, child and disability advocates, researchers, clinicians, and parents met at Wingspread Center in Racine, Wisconsin, for an invitational conference on Culture and Chronic Illness in Childhood. The meeting had as its goal the identification of the state of knowledge on the interface between culture, chronic illness, child development, and family functioning so as to lay the foundations for "culturally appropriate" health policy formulation, "culturally sensitive" services, and "culturally competent" clinicians. The purpose of this special supplement is to establish a national agenda for research, policy, service delivery, and training in addressing the needs of all children with chronic illnesses and disabilities that takes the family, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and culture into full account. To meet this task, five papers were commissioned. The first, by Newacheck et al, addresses the changes in incidence and prevalence of chronic illness and disability among children and youth by ethnic group. The second paper, by McManus et al, focuses on the trends in health services organization, delivery, and financing as they vary among ethnic groups in the United States. What emerges is a rhetoric of cultural sensitivity not paralleled in the organization or financing of health services. Groce and Zola's paper addresses how cultural attitudes and beliefs are the foundations of our perceptions about health and illness. Those perceptions at times are predisposed to conflict with a health care professional who, coming from a different culture, may hold different norms and beliefs. Brookins grounds her discussion within the context of child development and argues that for a child of color or one whose ethnic heritage is other than mainstream, the key to developmental success is bicultural competence—the ability to walk in and between two worlds.

Age Limits of Pediatrics

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 736-736
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Developmental Processes ◽  
Growth Development ◽  
Age Limits ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Special Circumstances

The purview of pediatrics includes the physical and psychosocial growth, development, and health of the individual. This commitment begins prior to birth when conception is apparent and continues throughout infancy, childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, when the growth and developmental processes are generally completed. The responsibility of pediatrics may therefore begin with the fetus and continue through 21 years of age. There are special circumstances (eg, a chronic illness and/or disability) in which, if mutually agreeable to the pediatrician, the patient, and when appropriate the patient's family, the services of the pediatrician may continue to be the optimal source of health care past the age of 21 years.

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