Five Different Lives after Suffering from Spinal Cord Injury: The Experiences of Nurses Who Take Care of Spinal Cord Injury Patients

Shou-Yu Wang, Shih-Ru Hong and Jung-Ying Tan
Additional contact information
Shou-Yu Wang: Discipline of Nursing, School of Health, University of New England, Armidale 2351, Australia
Shih-Ru Hong: Department of Nursing, Farlin Hospital, Changhua 508, Taiwan
Jung-Ying Tan: College of Nursing, Hungkuang University, Taichung 433, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: According to statistics of Ministry of Health and Welfare, accidents were the sixth common causes of death in Taiwan in 2016. A total of 1200 new cases of spinal cord injury each year are caused by accidents and adverse effects. This study explored nurses’ experience of caring for patients with spinal cord injury. Hermeneutic phenomenology was used in the data analysis. The five themes emerged: dramatic changes in life, life lost control, life after catastrophic injury, life takes turns for the worse for family, and the power of rebirth. This study revealed that accidents were the primary cause of spinal cord injury, and that nurses may neglect patients’ mental and social care. Career guidance should be offered to spinal cord injury patients to ensure that they retain sociality. This study provides recommendations regarding a patient’s and their family’s post-injury adaption process. The sexual desire of patients should be further explored in future research.

Keywords: experience of spinal cord injury; nurses; qualitative research; phenomenology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1058/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1058/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:3:p:1058-:d:727717

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().