Phenomenological Focus Research Articles

Navigating Life With Parkinson's Disease: A Focus Group Study on Coping Strategies and Considerations for Self-Management Support.

To investigate the experiences of people with Parkinson's disease in coping with and adapting to their disease and to identify considerations for a tailored self-management support program. A descriptive phenomenological focus group study. Five semi-structured focus groups were conducted between April 2023 and June 2023 in the Netherlands, with 12 people with Parkinson's disease. Two researchers independently performed an inductive content analysis. Three principal categories emerged: (1) Rational realisation versus emotional experience: the coping strategy transition. This category includes three main coping strategies: denial or avoidance coping, acknowledging with less active coping and proactive and task-oriented coping. (2) Factors that influence coping, including mindset and skills, social circles and communication and access to support and care. (3) Considerations for successful self-management of Parkinson's disease, highlighting key areas such as psycho-emotional guidance, nutrition and lifestyle, peer support and maintaining autonomy and sense of identity. Coping and adaptation strategies are individual and dynamic processes, with multiple key or turning points during the transition between strategies. Tailored self-management support can enhance coping abilities during these transitions, fostering adaptation to a life with Parkinson's disease. A patient-focused version of an existing blended self-management support program for family caregivers will be developed, which will be delivered by healthcare professionals. This study can help healthcare professionals tailor support for people with Parkinson's disease, emphasising their role in facilitating coping and adaptation. Enhancing self-management can improve self-efficacy, quality of life and potentially reduce healthcare utilisation in people with Parkinson's disease. Findings are reported according to the COREQ guidelines. Patients and Parkinson's disease experts participated in the preparation and implications of the findings. All participants could contribute to the self-management support program, either through video interviews or content feedback.

How colour evasiveness reproduces whiteness in Swedish universities

ABSTRACT We analyse how the whiteness of science and technology in Swedish universities is reproduced using four interviews with undergraduates involved in groups that work on making their courses more inclusive. Combining discourse analysis with a phenomenological focus on bodies, we begin with their nuanced understandings of gender inequality. We contrast these with their professions of ignorance about ‘race’ and racism and how they naturalise their ignorance. We explore how they create relations of proximity that ‘other’ students of colour and embed racialised distinctions within equalities work. We understand this within a broader colour evasiveness (an extension of colour blindness) in which whiteness is conflated with Swedishness.

Karsty and miserable: Dark humor in the subsurface geopoetics of caving

Geographic accounts of caving have critiqued the propensity of affects and practices which reinforce EuroAmerican coloniality and hubris, while also finding alternative paths of intimacy and lively relationality. Yet subsurface geographies can also reinforce cliched spatial and moral topographies. This article reflects on the production of an ambivalent affect of “dark humor” in caves, through caver social worlds, and in cave writing and song. I use a Bachelardian phenomenology of the imagination as a method of interpreting the geopoetics of cave space and cave emotion related topologically rather than topographically into easy interior/exterior or surface/depth oppositions. Through Jan and Herb Conn's cave ballads and poetry, imaginative place names, and accounts of irritating struggles with manganese, a different emotional culture of caving is produced than the masculine risk-seeking one might expect. Nonetheless, such phenomenological focus on immediacy of creative imagination risks precluding broader historical-political contexts of settler coloniality. Seeking a position between “ruthlessly critical” or “post-critically evasive” analyses, I consider how the Conns produced an “anti-heroic” attitude useful beyond caving and the politics of the subsurface but without purity or innocence.

A contemporary view of civic leadership: Understanding college student perspectives and addressing barriers of service and engagement.

Civic leadership programming can be found across the United States and allows individuals the opportunity to gain skills focused on engaging their local community, creating space for change and impact to occur, and developing civic agency, a practice of working together across differences. This work describes civic leadership understanding, an examination of Generation Z characteristics, and provides a description of the Civic Leadership Academy at one university. The results of a 3-year longitudinal series of phenomenological focus groups identify student-derived themes that set a definition of civic leadership: catalyst of social awareness and change, bridging people and passions, and developing a culture of service. In addition, they identify barriers to service and provide strategies to challenge these barriers through curricular and co-curricular programs.

Psychiatric nurses advocating for the human rights of mental health care users in Gauteng.

Psychiatric nurses play an important role in advocating for mental health care users such as advocating for the care, treatment and rehabilitation of mental health care users (MHCUs). Psychiatric nurses face various challenges while advocating for the human rights of MHCUs, particularly those unable to protect their rights because of the severity of their mental health conditions. This study aimed to explore and describe psychiatric nurses' lived experiences in advocating for the human rights of MHCUs in the Gauteng province. The study was conducted within the primary healthcare (PHC) setting's mental health services, Sedibeng District, Gauteng province. The study employed a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design. Three phenomenological focus group interviews were conducted, and audio recorded to collect data. Data were analysed using Tesch's method. Three themes emerged: (1) advocating for human rights was a strong push and an exhausting plea for psychiatric nurses in their attempts to voice and protect MHCUs' rights; (2) MHCUs and mental health services were discriminated against and excluded by various stakeholders; mental health awareness should be raised and (3) training needs to be conducted as a matter of urgency in order to destigmatise mental illness from government to societal level. Psychiatric nurses experienced feelings of disempowerment, frustration and helplessness in advocating for MHCUs' human rights. The study's findings will contribute to the body of knowledge in clinical psychiatric mental health practice on advocating for the human rights of MHCUs.

Likened to “a Boiled Egg”

International students make significant contributions to the UK and Chinese international students represent the largest body of overseas students in the UK. Although previous studies have examined different aspects of this cohort, an in-depth and comprehensive investigation of the experience of Chinese postgraduate taught students is seemingly very limited. This research employed a longitudinal design and conducted 34 interviews with the facilitation of photograph- and diagram-elicitation techniques. With a phenomenological focus, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, an inductive approach, was employed for the data analysis of this research investigation. Nine superordinate themes emerged to capture academic, social, linguistic and psychological aspects of students’ experience as well as motivations prior to their experience and expectations subsequent to their journey. This research offers a holistic framework of student experience by illustrating various emerging needs in different layers and highlighting English proficiency and social connections as two influential factors on other elements of student experience.

Anti-de Sitter momentum space in 3D and 4D quantum gravity

There has been strong interest in the possibility that in the quantum-gravity realm momentum space might be curved, mainly focusing, especially for what concerns phenomenological implications, on the case of a de Sitter momentum space. We here take as starting point the known fact that quantum gravity coupled to matter in 2+1 spacetime dimensions gives rise to an effective picture characterized by a momentum space with anti-de Sitter geometry, and we point out some key properties of 2+1 -dimensional anti-de Sitter momentum space. We observe that it is impossible to implement all of these properties in theories with a 3+1 -dimensional anti-de Sitter momentum space, and we then investigate, with the aim of providing guidance to the relevant phenomenology focusing on possible modified laws of conservation of momenta, the implications of giving up, in the 3+1 -dimensional case, some of the properties of the 2+1 -dimensional case.

Emergency medical dispatchers’ experiences of using the Medical Priority Dispatch System telephone triage to identify maternity emergencies: a qualitative focus group study

ObjectivesThe ambulance service plays a pivotal role in the provision of care in out-of-hospital maternity emergencies. Telephone triage of this patient group is complex and must be sensitive to an...

Violence, intimacy and veins of madness in a fraught border city

AbstractThis article considers the intimate, the violent and the psychopathological in Bukavu, an eastern Congolese border city known for rape and war. A phenomenological focus pries open tensions in this ruinous, neoliberal ‘boom town’, frictions related to mental health, patterns of resort, and derangement. Ethnographic portraits from co-produced fieldnotes reveal family and street dynamics and a few adaptive, public figures of madness. Bukavu knows unhinged, delirious, psychotic people and PTSD infrastructures in this ‘trauma zone’. Patterns of psychosis go with ‘vivacity’, a Foucauldian word. The non-scientific term madness points to politics and the everyday, with many mad persons roaming the streets with performances. Intimacy enables rethinking this city, where ways of telling and knowing madness speak to agitation, kinship, strangeness and ordinary matters of sleep, dress and faecal matter.

Voicing Relationality — Phenomenological Directions

Prefacing the 2007 reprint of Der Leib, der Raum und die Gefühle (1998), Hermann Schmitz, founder of the Neue Phänomenologie movement, contends that the rationalism of the early Enlightenment, its belief in objective truth and in measurable, empty space, is rooted in a much earlier event: The Enlightenment of the fourth/fifth centuries B.C. in Greece which marked a decisive shift away from a view of a dynamic, filled and thus relational cosmos. Whereas here, humans and natural phenomena are still interconnected, corporeal and dynamically involved with each other, the new paradigm is defined by intellectualism and an inward turn, with consciousness emerging as the culturally-sanctioned intellectual forerunner of solipsism and its cultural footprint: radical disconnection. In this paper, I argue that while cultural paradigms cannot easily be undone, with the help of phenomenological thinking, we have access to a different narrative, an important first step in re-thinking both interconnection and human responsibility in a world in which we have done so much damage. Outlining the contributions of Husserl (intersubjectivity) and Merleau-Ponty (embodiment and perception) as well as Schmitz (atmosphere), I hope to show that the phenomenological focus shifts from an initial Cartesianism (Husserl) towards relationality and an ethical re-focussing. By articulating a model of perception in which every moment of our understanding is shaped by relationality, phenomenological voices contribute alongside other forms of cultural expression to give hope for a different way of doing things, a hope badly needed in times of war and environmental disaster.

Nurses' Perceptions Regarding Their Professional Commitment and Development during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

During the pandemic, nurses have undergone a high level of professional burnout, suffering emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal realization. The object of this study is to understand in depth, through a phenomenological study of Giorgi, the perceptions on commitment and professional development of frontline nurses during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative study designed and analyzed using Giorgi's phenomenological focus. For data collection, semi-structured interviews were utilized in a theoretical sample of frontline nurses who worked in public hospitals of Extremadura and Madrid, Spain, until saturation of data. The interviews were conducted between the months of May and December 2020 following an outline of topics. The analysis was based on the phenomenological focus of Giorgi and was supported by the software Atlas-Ti 8.0. A total of 14 nurses participated in this study. Two main themes emerged to explain the perceptions of the nurses: (1) the professional commitment of the nurses during the pandemic and (2) the effects of the pandemic on professional development; seven subcategories were also identified. The social and professional development of nurses is important. If nurses feel that they are quality professionals, this will enable them to protect their psychosocial health and increase professional commitment toward their patients in difficult situations such as pandemics. The results of this study may serve as a guide for better understanding the problems and needs of nurses as healthcare providers. This may help administrators in the generation of solutions for the establishment of a safe and reliable work environment, which will in turn promote a healthcare system that can efficiently respond to future catastrophes.

How adolescents view the role of the wilderness in wilderness therapy: “I am in the middle of nowhere and that is okay”

Wilderness therapy (WT) has become recognized as an innovative treatment option for struggling adolescents. Several WT studies identify the unique elements of WT programs, examining how they contribute to outcomes. What has not been clearly determined is the role of the wilderness in a WT program. The current study was conducted at a wilderness therapy program in southern Utah and explores the role of the wilderness for adolescents who completed the program. Participants graduating from this program were recruited to participate in phenomenological focus group interviews to gather data. An inductive thematic analysis found four themes related to the wilderness setting including: being removed from prior distractions, the novel environment, challenging experiences, and feelings of awe in the wilderness. These findings support previous research by Russell and Gillis (2017) while also highlighting young participant’s perspectives of the role of wilderness in their treatment process.

Miscarriage and Curtains: A phenomenological autoethnography of curtains, privacy, and loss in an Early Pregnancy Unit in the UK

Curtains are an understudied everyday object which have considerable power. Research on their use within hospitals has primarily focused on their role in infection control, rather than as an agent for ensuring privacy and dignity. This paper presents an autoethnography of an Early Pregnancy Unit by a medical ethnographer experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, with a phenomenological focus on curtains. Within the treatment room, curtains facilitated bodily privacy and emotional support for those preparing for invasive scans. On the ward, staff attempted to use curtains to provide privacy, but the curtains were inadequate. This reduced the dignity of patients by allowing private moments, including visibly miscarrying a foetus, to be observed. It also allowed discussions around disposing of foetal remains to be overheard by others, reducing privacy. Hospital curtains are important agents of privacy and dignity, particularly around bereavement and loss.

Patient Experiences with Virtual Care during COVID-19: A Phenomenological Focus Group Study.

Virtual care has expanded during COVID-19 and enabled greater access and continuity of care for many patients. From a patient-oriented research perspective, understanding the patient experience with virtual care appointments is an important first step in identifying ways to better support patient use and satisfaction. The purpose of this qualitative study was twofold: i) to explore patients' experiences and perspectives with adoption and use of virtual care during COVID-19 in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada; ii) and identify the education and informational needs of patients to inform future strategies for supporting patient use of virtual care. Using a phenomenological approach we conducted a focus group interview with a purposive sample of patient representatives representing a cross-section of the population of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). Five (N=5) patient representatives were recruited from the NL Support Patient Advisory Council and participated in the focus group. The focus group was conducted in February 2022 via videoconferencing technology. Using thematic analysis, we identified several recurrent themes that described respondents' experiences with the use of virtual care during COVID-19, as well as their perceptions of education and informational needs to support more effective patient use of virtual care. Respondents felt virtual care is a beneficial addition to the healthcare system, enabling greater convenience and access to healthcare services. Key barriers and challenges in adopting and using virtual care appear to primarily arise from patients' lack of knowledge, understanding and familiarity with respect to virtual care. Cost, technological access, connectivity, and low digital literacy were challenges for some patients, particularly in rural communities and amongst seniors. Patient education and support was critical and needed to be inclusive, easy to understand, and include information regarding privacy, security, consent and the technology itself. Types of patient education experiences regarded as most helpful included peer support and knowledge sharing amongst patients themselves. Beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual care will have a continuing role in enhancing continuity of care for patients through more convenient access. The education and informational needs of patients are important considerations in promoting adoption and use of virtual care. Key education and informational needs and strategies were identified to enable and empower patients with the knowledge, digital literacy skills and supports to effectively use virtual care.

The lived experience of colorectal cancer patients with a temporary ileostomy and the patient’s perception of the ostomy nurses’ educational interventions

This study is aimed at exploring the lived experiences of colorectal cancer patients regarding temporary ileostomy and the educational interventions of ostomy nurses. This study is conducted using Heideggerian phenomenological focus group. Focus group interviews were conducted from November 2021 to February 2022 using a semi-structured guide with nine colorectal cancer patients having a temporary ileostomy. The interview data were analyzed using latent content analysis RESULTS: Four main categories and 13 sub-categories are identified as the result of data analysis. Main categories were "colorectal cancer and ileostomy: patient's adaptation," "supporting resources for the patient with ileostomy," "ileostomy closure: hope and concerns," and "ostomy nurse's professionalism." The main categories reflect the shared experiences and perceptions of colorectal cancer patients, across the timeline from colorectal cancer diagnosis to ileostomy closure. This study provides a timely response to a pilot project for recognizing ostomy nurse's education for patients with stomas. Also, the findings of this study contribute to nursing knowledge by providing patients' perspectives on the education provided to them by the ostomy nurse. Lastly, this study inspires future studies to evaluate and recognize ostomy nurse's practice by using various methodological approaches.

What happens when we ask? A phenomenological focus group on HIV prevention and sexual health education among emancipated foster care youth

Youth of color who have recently been emancipated from foster care are among the most vulnerable group at risk for having poor sexual health outcomes. It is essential for researchers to understand how emancipated foster care youth receive messages about safe sex and HIV/STI prevention in order to tailor health promotion activities for this group. This study presents a strengths-based view of emancipated foster care youth of color who developed an empowering, arts-based campaign to prevent HIV in their community using Youth Participatory Action Research (Y-PAR) methods. The project was led by 10 emancipated foster care youth who participated in two focus groups that centered on understanding their knowledge of HIV. Five major themes emerged from the focus group. Implications for researchers include incorporating safe spaces for youth to develop ideas that can result in empowering activities relating to prevention.

Alterations in the Experience of Time, Space, and Intersubjectivity and the Interaction with Pre-Existent Psychopathology during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to protect the physically vulnerable may disproportionately affect people with mental health vulnerabilities, who receive psychotherapeutic inpatient treatment, as many of these measures impact the (inter)subjective space crucial to psychotherapy. Objective: We investigate how people with pre-existing mental health conditions and healthcare professionals experienced changes linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: During the first COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown in spring 2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with patients and healthcare professionals at a clinic for psychosomatic medicine in Germany and analyzed them following the principles of descriptive phenomenology focusing on social interactions, intersubjectivity, and the therapeutic space. Results: We conducted a total of >30 h of interviews with 19 patients and 17 healthcare professionals. Analyses revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic and the related measures have led to a sudden loss of a sense of normality. Participants experienced changes in the perception of time, space, self, and embodied interaction with others, resulting in a profound feeling of alienation and “unhomeliness” which seemed to magnify pre-existing psychopathology. The inpatient psychotherapeutic environment provided safety by offering spatial and temporal structures and opportunities for social interaction, supporting people to find new ways to be in a changed world. Conclusions: Our study shows that despite the threat of infection, it is vital to continue to provide people with psychological vulnerabilities with a safe therapeutic space in which to regain a sense of safety in a changed world. This is particularly important, as those people seem to suffer intensely from the collateral measures of a pandemic.

Analysis of the Factors That Influence a Quality Physical Education in Mexico: School Supervision's Perspective.

Different international organizations have spoken out in favor of the value of physical activity in the integral development of children and adolescents, which is why different guidelines have been established for governments to facilitate quality Physical Education. In this sense, the objective of this study was to analyze the factors that influence the performance of PE teachers, from the perspective of pedagogical technical advisors and school district supervisors from various school zones from the State of Chihuahua. This was a transversal study, with a qualitative approach and phenomenological focus, which was chosen because it allows the understanding of these aspects from a unique and unrepeatable process; data collection was carried out through focus groups in which PE ATP supervisors participated and data were collaboratively analyzed. The main results indicated that Physical Education does not have the same importance as other subjects, a situation that is reflected in: constant curricular reforms, administrative inconsistencies, dependence on the school organization, and being seldom taken into account in decision-making. It was concluded that strict public policies are required to be applied uniformly throughout the country, as well as privilege Physical Education within the Basic Education curriculum in Mexico.

EMMA ANDIIEVSKA’S (UN)REPEATABLE POETRY, OR TWO COMPARATIVE SKETCHES

Emma Andiievska’s poetic manner is quite experimental in modern literary milieu due to dense metaphoric imagology, daring alliteration, specific subject’s representation, cosmogonic transformation motive, etc., so it hardly correlates with European art styles (modernism and postmodernism in particular), albeit her early oeuvre (1950—1960) is being consequently considered as surrealistic one. It is also hard to outline stylistic and mental links between Emma Andiievska’s poetry and Ukrainian or European one since she has been moving in her art creativity strictly towards poetic originality. At the same time, the poetess’ works can’t be excluded from the world literary process — that is the reason for a comparative search. Some literary parallels have been found in Ukrainian (Bohdan Ihor Antonych) and American (Emily Dickinson) poetry. Both authors could influence Emma Andiievska’s poetic manner. There is a similar attitude to reality and own creativity in Emma’s Andiievska’s poetic oeuvre and Emily Dickinson’s one, caused by a desire for solitude and priority of the author’s subjectivity in the lyrical view. There are also some similar syntactic means in the poetics of both female authors. The poetic manner of Emma Andiievska’s works written in the 1950s—1960s also resembles Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s poetical style, represented in his collections “Salute to Life”, “Three Rings” and “The Green Gospel”. The two authors have a similar phenomenological focus of lyrical reflection, surrealistic metaphors, and acoustic mode of connecting words in an utterance. The childlike features of a worldview and oneiric elements of narrative in the literary works realize the surrealistic mode of writing attributable both to Bohdan Ihor Antonych and Emma Andiievska.

'My Name to me a Sadness Wears': Self and Other According to 'Diary by E. B. B.'

This paper dwells on the issue of selfhood in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Diary (1831 – 1832). It explores individuation against three major presences in the poetess’s life: her father (and family), Hugh Stuart Boyd, and literature. The employed strategy of research includes a phenomenological (interspersed with feminist touches) focus on select excerpts from the Diary which reveal the writer’s concern for Self as the recognition of the priority of a precursory Other. Observations are made on the limits of human perception, time and space as human variables, the ontological essence of interpretation, and memory as a premise for cognizing life as care. A rare example of prose-fiction in the poetess’s oeuvre, her diary could be read as an instance of simultaneous self-nullification and self-affirmation, which offers possibilities for a dialectical definition of female genius as dialogue through narrative.