scholarly journals Integrative Power of Illness: A Qualitative Study of Cancer Patients

Author(s):  
Hossein Afrasiabi ◽  
Kasra Barzideh

Our aim of this study was to explore the constructions of cancer patients about their everyday interactions using an interpretive-qualitative approach. We wanted to know how cancer patients understand their condition and the challenges they face in family and everyday relationships. Accordingly, a basic qualitative research method was used, and interviews were conducted with 21 cancer patients and their caregivers. Participants were selected through the purposeful sampling in Ahvaz City, Iran. The collected data were firstly transcribed and then analyzed by the grounded theory coding analysis. The findings were represented in five main categories included: pressure on relatives, the limitation of relationships, helpful awareness, personal development, and the integrative diagnosis. According to the findings, cancer patients experience many fluctuations to adapt to the disease. During the interaction with family members and other people, patient experiences change in the actions and daily routine while, at the individual and family level, they experienced the limitation of relationships.

Author(s):  
Massimo Franchini ◽  
Antonella Tufano ◽  
Aniello Casoria ◽  
Antonio Coppola

AbstractCancer is associated with an increased incidence of both venous thromboembolism (VTE) and arterial thrombosis (cardiovascular events and ischemic stroke). Cancer-associated arterial thrombotic events are less well studied than VTE, but increasingly recognized, particularly in specific malignancies and in association with specific anticancer therapies. The pathogenesis of arterial thrombotic events in cancer is complex and involves generation of tumor-associated procoagulant factors and a variety of alterations in platelet function as well as in the coagulation and fibrinolytic systems, and endothelial injury and dysfunction, that combine to produce hypercoagulability. The multifactorial interaction between this prothrombotic state, the individual cardiovascular risk, advanced age and presence of comorbidities, and the specific neoplasm characteristics and therapy, may induce the vascular events. Recent studies based on population databases and prospective or retrospective analyses with prolonged follow-up highlight that cancer patients experience an increased (approximately 1.5–2-fold) risk of both cerebrovascular and cardiovascular events compared with noncancer individuals, which peaks in the time period of the diagnosis of cancer but may persist for years. Beyond the type of cancer, the risk reflects the tumor burden, being higher in advanced stages and metastatic cancers. The occurrence of arterial thromboembolic events is also associated with increased overall mortality. We here present an update of the pathophysiology, risk factors, clinical evidence, and treatment considerations on cancer-associated arterial thrombosis, in the light of the need for specific multidisciplinary prevention and surveillance strategies in this setting, in the frame of cardio-oncology approaches.


Author(s):  
Danielle Riverin-Simard

RÉSUMÉDans une économie du savoir, l’orientation professionnelle des adultes et la formation continue savèrent des conditions sine qua non à la viabilité et à l’évolution de nos sociétés. Mais un développement vocationnel intense et un apprentissage actifs présupposent une motivation qui s’autogénère au coeur même de la vie. Et pour mieux saisir cette volonté autogénératrice, il faut notamment approfondir les multiples dimensions du développement de l’adulte au fil des ans et de la mouvance de ses représentations de participation socio-professionnelle. Nos travaux relatifs à la vie au travail s’intéressent à ces questions. Ils ont recueilli, au Québec (Canada), les témoignages de nombreux adultes à laide d’entrevues semi-structurées. Les résultats laissent observer une transformation de soi, au quotidien, et aussi tout au long de la vie. Ils font également état de la transformation du rapport soi-société, dont un certain renouvellement du souci collectif et l’élargissement de la notion du travail.ABSTRACTIn a knowledged economy, adult vocational counseling and lifelong learning are necessary means for the socio-economic enhancement. And if we want to know how high personal development and learning motivations come from daily living, we have to analyse, among other variables, numerous aspects of longitudinal adult vocational development along the years; we also have to study the changing representations of the meaning of work. Our researches are concerned about those questions. They collected data from Quebec (Canada), which consist of numerous semi-structured interviews. The results show a continuous nonlinear adult vocational development and new elements of the individual-society relations.


Author(s):  
Hossein Afrasiabi ◽  
Kasra Barzideh

Background: People and communities answer to cancer, like other diseases, due to their cultures, norms, and values. At the personal and family level, the unfamiliarity of the disease can cause many issues for a person. These conditions alter the patient's daily functions, roles, and emotions. Efforts to manage emotions and form behaviors become processes of bonding between the disease's body and social experiences. The aim of this research was to explore the emotions of cancer patients by discovering their meaning and interpretation. Methods: This research was handled in a qualitative approach utilizing the grounded theory method. Semi-structured interviews were done with 17 cancer patients and their caregivers. Participants were chosen by the purposive sampling method (snowball), and the data provided from the interview after implementation were analyzed by the theoretical coding method. Results: The findings constructed in 5 main categories including: helplessness in notification, expectation of continuous empathy, admission delay, desire for emotional retrieval and social distress. At last, "suspense of emotions" was constructed as the major phenomenon that was experienced by cancer patients. Conclusion: Due to the findings of the research, patients' confusion in the face of cancer and their special conditions creates a sort of coping with the situation which prevents the achievement of stability and early concepts, and until reaching relatively established conditions, the patient and those close to them are suspended for some time. This condition puts their emotions in a volatile situation, which brings the experience of suspending emotions.


2019 ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
Н. В. Фрадкіна

The purpose and tasks of the work are to analyze the contemporary Ukrainian mass culture in terms of its value and humanistic components, as well as the importance of cultural studies and Ukrainian studies in educational disciplines for the formation of a holistic worldview of modern youth.Analysis of research and publications. Scientists repeatedly turned to the problems of the role of spirituality in the formation of society and its culture. This problem is highlighted in the publications by O. Losev, V. Lytvyn, D. Likhachev, S. Avierintsev, M. Zakovych, I. Stepanenko and E. Kostyshyn.Experts see the main negative impact of mass culture on the quality approach, which determines mass culture through the market, because mass culture, from our point of view, is everything that is sold and used in mass demand.One of the most interesting studies on this issue was the work by the representatives of Frankfurt School M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno «Dialectics of Enlightenment» (1947), devoted to a detailed analysis of mass culture. Propaganda at all socio-cultural levels in the form is similar in both totalitarian and democratic countries. It is connected, according to the authors, with the direction of European enlightenment. The tendency to unify people is a manifestation of the influence of mass culture, from cinema to pop. Mass culture is a phenomenon whose existence is associated with commerce (accumulation in any form – this is the main feature of education), in general, the fact that it exists in this form is related to the direction of the history of civilization.Modern mass culture, with its externally attractive and easily assimilated ideas and symbols, appealing to the trends of modern fashion, becomes a standard of prestigious consumption, does not require intense reflection, allows you to relax, distract, not teach, but entertains, preaches hedonism as the main spiritual value. And as a consequence, there are socio-cultural risks: an active rejection of other people, which leads to the formation of indifference; cruelty as a character trait; increase of violent and mercenary crime; increase in the number of alcohol and drug addicts; anti-patriotism; indifference to the values of the family and as a result of social orphanhood and prostitution.Conclusions, perspectives of research. Thus, we can conclude that modern Ukrainian education is predominantly formed by the values of mass culture. Namely, according to the «Dialectic» by Horkheimer and Adorno, «semi-enlightenment becomes an objective spirit» of our modern society.It is concluded that only high-quality education can create the opposite of the onset of mass culture and the destruction of spirituality in our society. It is proved that only by realizing the importance of cultivating disciplines in the educational process and the spiritual upbringing of the nation, through educational reforms, humanitarian knowledge will gradually return to student audiences.Formation of youth occurs under the influence of social environment, culture, education and self-education. The optimal combination of these factors determines both the process of socialization itself and how successful it will be. In this context, one can see the leading role of education and upbringing. It turns out that the main task of modern education is to spread its influence on the development of spiritual culture of the individual, which eventually becomes a solid foundation for the formation of the individual. Such a subject requires both philosophical and humanitarian approaches in further integrated interdisciplinary research, since the availability of such research will provide the theoretical foundation for truly modern educational and personal development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Fernando Ledesma Perez ◽  
Maria Caycho Avalos ◽  
Juana Cruz Montero ◽  
Andrea Ayala Sandoval

Citizenship is the exercise of the fundamental rights of people in spaces of participation, opinion and commitments, which can not be violated by any health condition in which the individual is. This research aims to interpret the process of construction of citizenship in hospitalized children, was developed through the qualitative approach, ethnomethodological method, synchronous design, with a sample of three students hospitalized in a health institute specializing in childhood, was used Observation technique and a semi-structured interview guide were obtained as results that hospitalized children carry out their citizenship construction in an incipient way, through the communication interaction they make with other people in the environment where they grow up.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Soklaridis ◽  
Ayelet Kuper ◽  
Cynthia R. Whitehead ◽  
Genevieve Ferguson ◽  
Valerie H. Taylor ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of gender bias among women hospital CEOs and explore to what these female leaders attribute their success within a male-dominated hospital executive leadership milieu. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study involved 12 women hospital CEOs from across Ontario, Canada. Purposeful sampling techniques and in-depth qualitative interview methods were used to facilitate discussion around experiences of gender and leadership. Findings Responses fell into two groups: the first group represented the statement “Gender inequality is alive and well”. The second group reflected the statement “Gender inequity is not significant, did not happen to me, and things are better now”. This group contained a sub-group with no consciousness of systemic discrimination and that claimed having no gendered experiences in their leadership journey. The first group described gender issues in various contexts, from the individual to the systemic. The second group was ambivalent about gender as a factor impacting leadership trajectories. Originality/value Representations of women’s leadership have become detached from feminism, with major consequences for women. This study reveals how difficult it is for some women CEOs to identify gender bias. The subtle everyday norms and practices within the workplace make it difficult to name and explain gender bias explicitly and may explain the challenges in understanding how it might affect a woman’s career path.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Rahman Jazieh ◽  
Khadega A. Abuelgasim ◽  
Husam I. Ardah ◽  
Mohammad Alkaiyat ◽  
Omar B. Da’ar

Abstract Background The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is common among cancer patients and it may reflect the individual and societal beliefs on cancer therapy. Our study aimed to evaluate the trends of CAM use among patients with cancer between 2006 and 2018. Methods We included 2 Cohorts of patients with cancer who were recruited for Cohort 1 between 2006 and 2008 and for Cohort 2 between 2016 and 2018. The study is a cross-sectional study obtaining demographic and clinical information and inquiring about the types of CAM used, the reasons to use them and the perceived benefits. We compared the changes in the patterns of CAM use and other variables between the two cohorts. Results A total of 1416 patients were included in the study, with 464 patients in Cohort 1 and 952 patients in Cohort 2. Patients in Cohort 2 used less CAM (78.9%) than Cohort 1 (96.8%). Cohort 1 was more likely to use CAM to treat cancer compared to Cohort 2 (84.4% vs. 73%, respectively, p < 0.0001,); while Cohort 2 used CAM for symptom management such as pain control and improving appetite among others. Disclosure of CAM use did not change significantly over time and remains low (31.6% in Cohort 1 and 35.7% for Cohort 2). However, physicians were more likely to express an opposing opinion against CAM use in Cohort 2 compared to Cohort 1 (48.7% vs. 19.1%, p < 0.001, respectively). Conclusion There is a significant change in CAM use among cancer patients over the decade, which reflects major societal and cultural changes in this population. Further studies and interventions are needed to improve the disclosure to physicians and to improve other aspects of care to these patients.


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