![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Learning Objective 1: To create meaning through the artistic interpretation method.
Learning Objective 2: To integrate the conceptual knowledge of family with the chronic illness expeience to improve health care.
Background: Family systems theory and Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy informed this study, and provided an understanding of the interactional nature between family and chronic illness. This interpretative approach is formed through an intersubjective stance where the viewer becomes part of the art and comes to a comprehension of meaningful patterns.
Methods: This phenomenologic study consisted of thirteen graduate nursing students that viewed the artwork and wrote a narrative after reflecting on their initial response to the work. Narratives were entered into a qualitative analysis program and coded. This was followed by a research team discussion to group the codes into themes.
Results: The overall experience of viewing the artwork was one of contrasting understandings of the sense of struggle within unbounded time. Participants described their experience of “The Other Side” as one of contrasts between “The Dream” and “Life with a Chronic Illness”. Simultaneously they sensed the security of “The Dream” and the vulnerability of “Life with a Chronic Illness”. Meanwhile, they expressed empathic awareness and understanding for the family’s sense of struggle within the unbounded time presented by chronic illness. Viewers commented that this was a powerful, insightful, overwhelming and meaningful experience. One viewer stated, “What a powerful and unique way to look at life, illness, health and family!”
Conclusions: Artistic interpretation can be used to bring the viewer to an understanding of the family’s experience of chronic illness. The sense of vulnerability and struggling described by families was immediately perceived by the viewing nurses through the artistic interpretation method. This empathic perception of the family’s experience with chronic illness may be a first step to support the development of family caring in health care.
See more of: Oral Paper & Poster: Science Sessions