Abstract
This article presents findings from a study focusing on how myocardial infarction (MI) patients undergoing rehabilitation in an outpatient clinic view the role of family relationships in their daily lives. With a relational, person-oriented perspective on patients’ suffering and coping, the aim is to explore the existential significance of social support. The project design is qualitative, inspired by Ricoeur's reflective phenomenological approach, involving a naïve reading, a structural analysis, and a critical interpretation. The study shows that the patients try to keep their worries to themselves and they avoid talking to their close family about everyday existential life phenomena such as anxiety, loneliness and the balance between security and insecurity. Achieving harmony after MI involves a balance between feeling safe and insecure in order to satisfy the needs of their close family. This places the cardiac nurse as a catalyst for existential communication between the patient and the close family.
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