HEALING THROUGH INTEGRATION: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF CARDIAC REHABILITATION.
Contributors: Boston College.
Published: 1995
Number of pages: 298
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Psychology, Behavioral.; Psychology, Developmental.
Description: The purpose of this investigation was to explore and describe the basic life processes, transitions and meanings that adult patients with coronary artery disease experience, as perceived by patients participating in cardiac rehabilitation. Data gathering and analysis were accomplished using the phenomenologic procedures outlined by Spiegelberg (1976) and van Manen (1990).

Integration was the central theme that emerged from the data to explain healing and engagement in behaviors that promote wellbeing. Integration operationalizes as the process of bringing together a number of complex internal and external human responses with past and present bio/psycho/social/spiritual and behavioral experiences. The process of integration included the components of awareness and responding. Awareness involved awakening to "what happened", consciously confronting the illness by determining "what does it mean to me", and choosing a direction for repatterning or "what am I going to do about it". Responding involved acquiring and mastering those behavioral skills needed for self-management of one's illness. Three tasks are involved in responding: gathering information; building a rhythm of the new behavior(s) into one's life; and taking responsibility to become an active partner in one's care. Some degree of perceived vulnerability is an essential condition for the process of integration to begin and ensue as it creates a disruption in one's reality, forcing one to find meaning in the illness experience and to repattern.

Integration is enhanced by social support, healing awareness, and/or eliciting the relaxation response. The context surrounding integration is: the patient's unique history, the cardiac health crisis, and transformation.

This model provides a basis for nursing assessment and the implementation of relevant interventions designed to assist individuals in integrating health-enhancing behaviors and to heal.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-12, Section: B, page: 6673.

Thesis (PH.D.)--BOSTON COLLEGE, 1995.

School code: 0016.