Exploration of Patients’ Lived Experiences during Chemotherapy within Clinical Pharmacological Care
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Abstract
Pharmaceutical science has increasingly recognized the importance of understanding patients’ lived experiences as an essential component of therapeutic success. Within this field, chemotherapy represents a complex intersection of pharmacological efficacy, emotional endurance, and existential meaning, yet its subjective dimensions remain underexplored. Despite advances in clinical outcomes research, little is known about how patients experience, interpret, and give meaning to their encounters with pharmacological treatment in real-life contexts. This study addresses that gap by applying a phenomenological approach to explore the lived experiences of cancer patients undergoing platinum-based chemotherapy and to uncover the essence of their therapeutic journey. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), data were collected through semi-structured interviews with twelve participants and analyzed thematically to capture the experiential and relational meanings of pharmacological care. The findings revealed five essential themes: the embodiment of suffering and endurance, trust and uncertainty in pharmacological care, negotiation between herbal and conventional therapies, reconstruction of identity through illness, and the transformative role of empathy in clinical encounters. These results demonstrate that healing extends beyond biomedical efficacy to encompass emotional, relational, and spiritual transformation shaped by empathy and patient agency. The study contributes to qualitative pharmaceutical research by offering a deeper understanding of how pharmacological treatment is lived, not merely administered. However, this study acknowledges methodological limitations, including its small, context-specific sample and reliance on self-reported narratives, which may limit transferability. These insights have significant implications for developing empathy-driven, patient-centered pharmaceutical care models and for guiding future research integrating phenomenological methods in pharmacological sciences.
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