You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 1, Issue 4
  • People with drinking problems experienced suffering as a vicious, spiralling vortex that encompassed all aspects of their being

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Qualitative
People with drinking problems experienced suffering as a vicious, spiralling vortex that encompassed all aspects of their being

https://doi.org/10.1136/ebn.1.4.134

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Smith BA.The problem drinker's lived experience of suffering: an exploration using hermeneutic phenomenology.J Adv Nurs 1998 Jan;27:213–22.OpenUrlCrossRefPubMedWeb of Science

    Question How do people with drinking problems describe the lived experience of suffering?

    Design

    Hermeneutic phenomenology.

    Setting

    An alcohol problems clinic in Scotland, UK.

    Participants

    A purposeful sample of 6 participants (3 men and 3 women, age range 42–61 y) who attended the clinic. All participants met the International Classification of Diseases - 10 criteria for alcohol dependence syndrome.

    Methods

    Indepth interviews were done in the clinic or at the participant's home, and were audiotaped and transcribed. The researcher kept a reflexive journal of thoughts and feelings during the process. Themes were extracted using a framework suggested by Van Manen and were validated by independent expert nurses. An interpreted account of each participant's experience was generated and given to the participants for validation.

    Main results

    The lived experience of suffering was described in terms of Van Manen's existential life worlds: corporeal, relational, temporal, and spatial. Corporeal (physical) …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Source of funding: Grampian Health Care NHS Trust.

    • For correspondence: BA Smith, Centre for Advanced Studies in Nursing, Fosterhill Health Centre, Westburn Road, Aberdeen AB25 2A4, UK. Fax +44 (0)1224 840683.