Cancer patients' experiences with nature: Normalizing dichotomous realities
Section snippets
The cancer care context
People affected by cancer can experience physical, psychosocial and mobility adjustments impacting their wellbeing and quality of life (Korszun et al., 2014), which may result in patients and carers having unmet needs (Sanson-Fisher et al., 2000). Given these immediate and ongoing challenges, numerous psychosocial care interventions are being created with the aim to alleviate cancer patient and carer strain, which have been broadly categorized as educational techniques, behavioral training,
Design and data collection
The qualitative research design used a grounded theory approach following the procedures recommended by Corbin and Strauss (2008) to generate a theoretical outline of the process underlying cancer patients' use of nature. Data collection comprised semi-structured interviews conducted either face-to-face in the hospital setting or over the phone. The semi-structured interview schedule posed open-ended questions about patients' own definition of nature, nature preferences, experiences, usages,
Participant demographics and description of nature interactions
Twenty cancer patients (9 female, mean age = 53 years, SD = 17) with mixed diagnoses participated in a single semi-structured interview (mean duration = 54 min). All were Australian born except two were born in Sri Lanka. Eleven were currently undergoing treatment, 5 were inpatients, 15 were outpatients, 8 underwent face-to-face interviews and 12 underwent phone interviews. One consented participant was withdrawn after attempts failed to make contact for scheduling the interview. Table 1
Discussion
The wide range of cancer patients’ experiences with nature shown in the five typologies (Table 2) and the theoretical analysis bear some reflection on the richness and subtleties of cancer patients' inner lives and struggle to maintain or in some cases shift everyday perspectives while also relocating themselves into a newly forming normality, a new-normal. It reflects their challenges to maneuver the unfolding cancer scenarios and move forward in their lives.
Many aspects of participants'
Conflict of interest
The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding
The first author (SB) was supported by a PhD scholarship grant from The University of Melbourne during the study period.
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