"This is your own doing" - An addiction narrative of smoking relapse in women with COPD
Engelsk titel: "This is your own doing" - An addiction narrative of smoking relapse in women with COPD
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Författare:
Jonsdottir, Rosa
;
Jonsdottir, Helga
Email: rosajons@landspitali.is
Språk: Eng
Antal referenser: 39
Dokumenttyp:
Artikel
UI-nummer: 11057560
Sammanfattning
Aim: This paper presents a qualitative study on the experience of women with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who have repeatedly relapsed to smoking.
Background: Smoking addiction and simultaneously suffering from a smoking related disease is a complex problem. Studies focusing on this experience are depleting, particularly as regards women.
Methods: From an interpretive phenomenological perspective, seven women 47-65 years old, recently admitted to hospital due to exacerbation of COPD, participated in the study. Data were collected by interviewing each woman twice. Using narrative analysis, one story - The Story - was constructed into which the main threads of all of the women's experiences were woven.
Findings: The Story illuminates a life of a woman, struggling with a chronic lung disease in conjunction with repeated relapses to smoking. Although the disease was threatening the woman was unable to exclude the cigarette -at times her only friend-from her life. More health problems crept in with burning questions about what she had done to herself and where she was going with her life. Conclusion: The story provides an opportunity to explore what it may mean for women to be unable to refrain from smoking despite the existence of a serious and health damaging disease, which smoking only aggravates. This paradox is a major challenge for health professionals who must put an effort into understanding this experience. In this effort lies the possibility of disentangling the web that the tobacco has spun and in which the women are caught.