1. Ready to Go Home? Nurses' Perspectives of Prolonged Admission for Patients Undergoing Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery for Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer in Denmark.
- Author
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Missel M, Donsel PO, Petersen RH, and Beck M
- Subjects
- Humans, Denmark, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Length of Stay, Adult, Attitude of Health Personnel, Adaptation, Psychological, Lung Neoplasms surgery, Lung Neoplasms psychology, Lung Neoplasms nursing, Focus Groups, Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung surgery, Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung psychology, Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung nursing, Qualitative Research, Thoracic Surgery, Video-Assisted
- Abstract
Enhanced recovery after surgery programs with median postoperative hospitalization of 2 days improve outcomes after lung cancer surgery. This article explores nursing care practices for patients with lung cancer who remain hospitalized despite having recovered somatically. Qualitative focus group interviews were conducted with 16 nurses. Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics underpins the methodology applied in this study, and we relied on Benner and Wrubel's theory. The nurses emphasized that the thoughts of patients with a recent lung cancer diagnosis revolve around more than the surgery. Nursing comprises not only practicalities but also attending to patients' stress and their coping with being struck with lung cancer and having undergone surgery. A counterculture emerged to counteract the logic of productivity, indicating that caring as a worthy end in itself may be underestimated in protocol-driven care. Prolonging hospitalization largely depends on clinical judgment. The nurses' aim is not to keep patients in the hospital but to avoid any needless suffering, allowing them to reclaim the primacy of caring., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
- Published
- 2024
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