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Biomedical subjects

Barbara L Paterson

Publications and source records attributed to Barbara L Paterson.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

The construction of hepatitis C as a chronic illness.

The purpose of the article is to present one aspect of the findings of a descriptive, exploratory investigation of the self-care decision making of 33 adults diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C (Hep C), specifically how they experienced living with this disease as a chronic illness. The findings were interpreted from a social constructivist perspective in which Hep C was viewed as both a biomedical entity and a social construction. The authors will suggest that although Hep C is constructed by people with the disease as a chronic illness, the care of this disease is often based on an acute model that acknowledges its chronicity only in terms of the persistence of the virus. The article points to the need for a model of Hep C care that incorporates the dimensions of the chronic illness experience.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed2003

How different can you be and still survive? Homogeneity and difference in clinical nursing education.

The article focuses on a component of a three-year institutional ethnography regarding the construction of cultural diversity in clinical education. Students in two Canadian schools of nursing described being a nursing student as bounded by unwritten and largely invisible expectations of homogeneity in the context of a predominant discourse of equality and cultural sensitivity. At the same time, they witnessed many incidents, both personally and those directed toward other individuals of the same culture, of clinical teachers problematizing difference and centering on difference as less than the expected norm. This complex and often contradictory experience of difference and homogeneity contributed to their construction of cultural diversity as a problem. The authors provide examples of how the perception of being different affected some students' learning in the clinical setting and their interactions with clinical teachers. They will illustrate that this occurred in the context of macro influences that shaped how both teachers and students experienced and perceived cultural diversity. The article concludes with a challenge to nurse educators to deconstruct their beliefs and assumptions about inclusivity in nursing education.

Anthropology, Cultural↗
PubMed2003

The koala has claws: applications of the shifting perspectives model in research of chronic illness.

The Shifting Perspectives Model of Chronic Illness was recently developed in the metasynthesis of more than 250 qualitative research reports about chronic illness. The model proposes that people with chronic illness view living with their disease in accordance with how much wellness or illness is in the foreground of their experience. It also identifies a number of circumstances and situations that can prompt a shift from wellness or illness in the foreground to wellness or illness in the background. One such situation is being interviewed or observed as a participant in research about the experience of living with a chronic disease. The author reviews the model, providing excerpts from an interview with a key informant with a chronic illness to substantiate the model and to identify a number of implications of the model for researchers. She highlights some of the difficulties and limitations encountered when researchers attempt to define the experience of living with chronic illness through the lens of a single perspective.

Canada↗