Abstract
BackgroundPeople with advanced cancer disease experience great bodily changes due to disease or treatment. They tend to feel ashamed when their bodies are subjected to such changes and they feel their dignity is threatened.AimTo explore the patients' experiences of the bodily changes in relation to dignity.DesignThe study has a hermeneutic qualitative design.MethodIndividual in‐depth interviews and participant observations were conducted with 13 patients with advanced cancer disease at a hospice inpatient unit in Norway. Gadamer's ontological hermeneutics inspired the interpretation.Results and conclusionThe patients' unpredictable, sick bodies forced the patients, or gave them the opportunity, to relate to their bodies in an honest way. The patients, living in interaction between suffering and health, strove to find dignity. The patients had a will to live and they experienced a love in their unruly bodies that both helped alleviate their suffering and give them an experience of enhanced dignity. It is important that nurses have insight into the consequences of bodily changes for the patients' experiences of dignity in health and suffering to provide good, dignified care.
Highlights
Serious illness leads to a loss of “the destination and map” that pre‐ viously guided the sick person's life (Frank, 2013)
The body is described as the bearer of relative dignity (Edlund, Lindwall, Post, & Lindström, 2013) and people may experience dignity when they perform actions that are in accordance with their culture's and their body's rules and norms for dignity
Since the aim of the study is to acquire a deeper understanding of the patients' experiences of the bodily changes in relation to dignity, the study has a hermeneutic qualitative design based on Gadamer's (2004) ontological hermeneutics, where the purpose is to achieve understanding through interpretation
Summary
Serious illness leads to a loss of “the destination and map” that pre‐ viously guided the sick person's life (Frank, 2013). People with advanced cancer diagnoses experience great bodily changes due to disease and/or treatment. People with advanced cancer disease experience great bodily changes due to disease or treatment. They tend to feel ashamed when their bodies are sub‐ jected to such changes and they feel their dignity is threatened. Research studies re‐ veal that dignity is threatened and people feel ashamed when they experience great bodily changes caused by their severe cancer dis‐ ease (Franklin, Ternestedt, & Nordenfelt, 2006; Lin, Watson, & Tsai, 2013). These bodily changes affect not just the patients' bodies, but their whole life
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