engleski

Life with a chronic illness – ongoing study

Background: It is argued that too much emphasis has been placed on treatment oriented medical care models, while not enough attention has been given to issues relating behavior and experience that people with chronic illness actually live through. Research question(s): To describe diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2) or myocardial infarction (MI) patients experience in confronting, getting acquainted with, accepting and living with those chronic illnesses. Methods: The mixed-method research with triangulation design will be used. The qualitative research part will be based on the principles of grounded theory methodology (simultaneous data collection and analysis, constant comparative analysis, theoretical sampling). 64 patients (32 DMT2 and 32 IM) will purposefully be sampled and interviewed in depth by 16 randomly selected family doctors (from the 3 Zagreb Health Centers). In the quantitative research part, using standardized questionnaires, data on illness perception, health locus of control, quality of life and social support will be collected from this 64 patients. Statistic analysis will be done using Statistica, version 7.1 statistic program, and P<0.05 will be considered as statistically significant. After finishing the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the convergence or divergence of the results will be discussed and interpreted. Results:We expect that MI patients in the process of confronting, getting acquainted with, accepting and living with chronic illness face greater need for alterations in everyday life, are gravely affected by their illness, and adapt harder to it than DMT2 patients. Conclusions: A comprehensive understanding of the patient adaptation process could help in caring for chronic patient during their getting acquainted with numerous uncertainties and help them in finding the right way to cope with the stress arising from having a chronic illness. Points for discussion at EGPRN (max. 3): 1. Inclusion criteria for a purposeful sampling will be: type of illness (DMT2 or MI), illness duration (2-5 years), patient age (45-65 years), illness duration (2-5 years), sex (male, female) and good informer characteristics. 2. In order to achieve good validity and reliability of the research different types of triangulation will be used: 1) triangulation of data collection technique (depth interviewing and questioners) ; 2) researchers’ triangulation (in qualitative data analysis the main researcher and three independent researchers will achieve consensus in data analysis) ; 3) data interpretation triangulation (results of qualitative - grounded theory analysis and quantitative - statistic analysis will be interpreted and discussed).

Chronic illness; multmorbidity; diabetes mellitus; myocardial infarction

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