Abstract
Living with a chronic disease like chronic heart failure (CHF) results in disruptions, losses, and setbacks in the participants’ daily lives that affect health and well-being. By using grounded theory method, we illuminate whether persons with CHF experience discontinuity in life and, if so, what helps them to preserve and strengthen continuity in their daily lives. Thirteen individual interviews and one group interview with five participants, aged 62 to 88 years, were carried out. Through data collection and data analysis, we constructed three concepts that make up a model illustrating the participants’ experiences in daily life in relation to corporeality, temporality, and identity: experiences of discontinuity, recapturing approaches, and reconciliation. The first concept, experiences of discontinuity, was constructed from the following categories: the alienated body, the disrupted time, and the threatened self. The second concept, recapturing approaches, consists of categories with continuity creative constructions: repossessing the body, maintaining a façade, seizing the day, restoring the balance of time, and preserving self. These actions are intended to overcome problems and master changes in order to maintain balance in daily life through constructions that recreate normality and predictability. The third concept, reconciliation, was constructed from three categories: feel normal, set to adjust, and be positioned. These categories describe how the participants minimize their experiences of discontinuity by recapturing approaches in order to reconcile with various changes and maintain continuity in daily life. Our findings provide a fresh perspective on continuity that may contribute to the development of significant interventions in continuity of care for persons with CHF. However, continuity requires that healthcare systems support each patient's ability to manage change, reorientation, and adjustment to the new situation in order to make it easier for the patient to create and continue living their daily lives as they desire.
Highlights
Persons with chronic heart failure (CHF) live with a complex clinical syndrome of symptoms based on their hearts’ lack of supporting circulation in the body (Krum & Abraham, 2009)
Living with a chronic disease like CHF resulted in disruptions, losses, and setbacks in the participants’ daily lives
Common-sense perceptions of corporeality, temporality, and identity were changed as the disease occupied daily life, leading to experiences of discontinuity
Summary
Persons with chronic heart failure (CHF) live with a complex clinical syndrome of symptoms based on their hearts’ lack of supporting circulation in the body (Krum & Abraham, 2009). Living with CHF may involve an unpredictable daily life due to losses, interruptions, insecurity, and experiences of discontinuity (Burstrom, Brannstrom, Boman, & Strandberg, 2012; Davidson, Dracup, Phillips, Padilla, & Daly, 2007) These experiences are often described from a misery perspective; it seems important to counteract this viewpoint with a more positive perspective by studying how persons bridge the misery and what contributes to continuity in their lives. Continuity can instead be seen as a dynamic process where changes are a part of life; from this viewpoint, adaptive strategies based on past experience are used to deal with changes and create stability in life Another way to understand a person’s multifaceted experiences of continuity in life is from a philosophical point of view. According to Atchley (1989), experiences of both continuity and discontinuity occur within a person’s life process due to various changes; such changes can be considered as both negative and positive in relation to continuity
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