Sammanfattning
Background: Out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest survivors suffer from psychological distress and cognitive impairments. They experience existential insecurity and vulnerability and are striving to return to a life in which well‐being and the meaning of life have partly changed. However, research highlighting the experiences of in‐hospital cardiac arrest survivors is lacking. This means that evidence for postresuscitation care has largely been extrapolated from studies on out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest survivors, without considering potential group differences. Studies investigating survivors’ experiences of an in‐hospital cardiac arrest are therefore needed.
Aim: To illuminate meanings of people's lived experiences of surviving an in‐hospital cardiac arrest.
Design: An explorative, phenomenological hermeneutic method to illuminate meanings of lived experiences.
Method: Participants were identified through the Swedish national register of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and recruited from two hospitals. A purposive sample of eight participants, 53–99 years old, who survived an in‐hospital cardiac arrest 1–3 years earlier, was interviewed.
Findings: The survivors were striving to live in everyday life and striving for security. The struggle to reach a new identity meant an existence between restlessness and a peace of mind, searching for emotional well‐being and bodily abilities. The search for existential wholeness meant a quest for understanding and explanation of the fragmented cardiac arrest event and its existential consequences. The transition from hospital to home meant a transition from care and protection to uncertainty and vulnerability with feelings of abandonment, which called for a search for security and belonging, away from isolation and loneliness.
Conclusion: Surviving an in‐hospital cardiac arrest can be further understood by means of the concept of hospital‐to‐home transition. Following hospital discharge, patients felt vulnerable and abandoned when pending between denial and acceptance of the ‘new’ life. Hence, the healthcare system should play a significant role when it comes to facilitate cardiac arrest survivors’ security during hospital‐to‐home transition. • Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons.