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An exploration of anticipatory grief: the lived experience of people during their spouses’ terminal illness and in bereavement
Author(s) -
Duke Susan
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of advanced nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.948
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1365-2648
pISSN - 0309-2402
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1998.00742.x
Subject(s) - grief , traumatic grief , psychology , hermeneutics , lived experience , disenfranchised grief , psychotherapist , interpretation (philosophy) , interpretative phenomenological analysis , developmental psychology , qualitative research , sociology , philosophy , epistemology , computer science , programming language , social science
An exploration of anticipatory grief: the lived experience of people during their spouses’ terminal illness and in bereavement Anticipatory grief has been the subject of much debate since Lindemann first coined the term to describe premature mourning. Much of the research in this area takes a positivist approach focusing on the effect of anticipatory grief on bereavement. In contrast, this study, explores anticipatory grief through a Heideggerian phenomenological approach to elicit the experience of anticipatory grief. Unstructured interviews were conducted with four participants. The resulting data were interpreted using hermeneutics and evaluated using the criteria identified by Madison. The themes arising from this interpretation identify the change the participants experienced. Although these findings are limited to four participants, they are offered to raise awareness of the impact of multiple role loss and the impact of diagnosis on supporting partners. The findings also raise ways in which nurses might support people experiencing loss.