Abstract
ObjectiveGetting COVID-19 makes a person confront numerous individual, physical, psychological, family and social challenges. Therefore, the present study was conducted to explain the experiences, challenges and adaptation strategies in patients with COVID-19 in Tehran, Iran.MethodsThe present study was performed with a qualitative approach and phenomenological method among 33 patients with COVID-19. From July 20 to September 21, access to participants and data collection were done in person (15 people) and by phone (18 people) through targeted sampling and snowball and semi-structured interviews. Data management was carried out using MAXQDA-2018 software and its analysis was done by the Colaizzi analysis method. Guba and Lincoln's criteria were also observed to improve the quality of results.ResultsAfter analyzing the data, two main categories and 17 subcategories were obtained, including (1) experiences and challenges (ignoring the disease, blaming, physical health disorders, mental problems, guilt, and remorse, being blamed, living a life of disappointment and ambiguity, emotional challenges, frustrating reactions from others, helplessness and limitation) and (2) disease adaptation strategies (spirituality, learning about COVID-19, doing valuable and fun activities, participating in treatment, strengthening one's spirit and hope, trying to make up for past mistakes and virtual communication).ConclusionsBased on the results, interventions and policies such as increasing people's health knowledge and literacy to get acquainted with the symptoms of the disease and prompt referral for diagnosis and treatment, teaching stress and psychological pressure management techniques, instructing families to continue emotional and social support for patients and strengthening and reproducing the strategies patients use, along with teaching disease coping skills, harnessing the potential of cyberspace and the media can make it easier to tolerate illness and get back to life.
Highlights
COVID-19, which broke out in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, is a new member of a broader family of viruses that originally appeared in 2003, leading to respiratory infections ranging from a simple cold to an epidemic and even a pandemic [1, 2]
This research was conducted with a qualitative approach and a phenomenological method. This method looks at the world as it is lived by a person and tries to explore the meanings that the person has experienced in daily life and to reach a new understanding of the world of life by revealing new and neglected meanings of these experiences [25]
The first category obtained from data was the challenges experienced by COVID-19 patients during the disease and the treatment process
Summary
COVID-19, which broke out in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, is a new member of a broader family of viruses that originally appeared in 2003, leading to respiratory infections ranging from a simple cold to an epidemic and even a pandemic [1, 2]. COVID-19, which is currently spreading worldwide [3, 4], is the world’s largest current threat to public health and is expected to be the deadliest epidemic of the last 100 years [5,6,7]. As of December 24, 2021, the total number of people infected with COVID-19 is more than 279,026,000 and the number of deaths is more than 5,405,000. Iran is one of the countries with a high level of involvement in COVID-19 with 6,181,84 cases and 131,306 deaths [8]
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