Exploring the Lived Experiences of Cancer Patients: Emotional Burden, Meaning-Making, and Adaptation in Nursing Care
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Abstract
Nursing research increasingly recognizes that health-related phenomena involve not only clinical conditions but also complex subjective experiences shaped by emotional, relational, and contextual dimensions. Within this field, understanding how individuals interpret and live through such experiences has become essential for advancing patient-centered care and meaningful nursing practice. However, existing approaches often rely on practical and quantitative frameworks that fail to capture the depth of lived experience, raising the question of how the essence of these experiences can be more comprehensively understood. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of [specific phenomenon under investigation] among [participant group, e.g., patients with chronic kidney disease, family caregivers, nursing students, etc.] in [study setting/location, e.g., a tertiary hospital in Indonesia] Here, a phenomenological approach is employed to explore and reveal the essential meanings embedded in participants’ lived experiences, providing a deeper and more holistic understa nding of the phenomenon. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with purposively selected participants who had direct experience of the phenomenon. The data were analyzed using a systematic phenomenological thematic process, allowing identification of core meaning structures across narratives. The findings demonstrate that the phenomenon was experienced as a multidimensional process involving emotional burden, uncertainty, relational dynamics, adaptive effort, and reconstruction of self-understanding. These themes reveal that participants actively engaged in meaning-making processes shaped by personal and social contexts. The study contributes to a more human-centered understanding of nursing phenomena and highlights the importance of integrating subjective experience into care practices and future research development.
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