CPAP devices: encouraging patients with sleep apnea.

Continuous positive airway pressure devices (CPAP) used at night prevent apnea, hypoxia, and sleep disturbance. Although CPAP is more effective than placebo in improving sleepiness and quality of life measures in people with obstructive sleep apnea, patients often prefer a less-effective oral appliance. This article examines help-seeking experiences in support groups of individuals with sleep apnea who use CPAP devices.

Technology--patient interactions: Internet use for gaining a healthy context for living with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to understand the practical knowledge gained from Internet use by implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) recipients through hermeneutic interpretation of narrative stories.

Methods: The study took place through an online virtual focus group and e-mail interviews. Thirteen participants attended the ongoing 4-week virtual focus group, and 8 followed up with individual interviews.

Internet users becoming immersed in the virtual world. Implications for nurses.

Worldwide, people are using the Internet for computer-mediated communication (CMC) in increasing numbers. Nurse researchers have begun to examine the use of this medium for communication, education, and support of their clients. Therefore, it is important to know the experiences and meanings of CMC if the Internet is to be used for nursing interventions.

Gender differences in stories of everyday Internet use.

This study is a secondary analysis of data collected from four web-based focus groups of nurses and computer scientists who were frequent Internet users. Our aim in this secondary study was to examine gender differences and shared practices in the interpretation of narratives when using this technology. We found that women have different values than men when using the Internet.

The meaning of communication: experiences with augmentative communication devices.

This study is a secondary analysis of data collected from end-users of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices as part of a project of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer (T2RERC). The original data, obtained from a Web-based focus group, were used to identify unmet consumer needs in existing AAC devices. The purpose of the secondary analysis was to give context to the original study through phenomenological interpretation of the narratives, thereby gaining an understanding of the common meanings and shared experiences and practices of people who use AAC technology.

The internet as a catalyst for shifting power in provider-patient relationships.

Traditional provider-patient relationships can be characterized with a gatekeeper model in which the provider role is keeper of medical knowledge and major decision-maker. Internet access by many persons makes possible a shift that expands power and control of health information, which is no longer just accessible to a privileged few. Although congruent with emerging social norms, patient participation in health care remains controversial.

Nursing at ground zero: experiences during and after September 11 World Trade Center attack.

The purpose of this study is to discover shared perceptions, feelings, and common experiences of nurses after the September 11th World Trade Center terrorist attack through interpretive analysis of narrative stories of seventeen nurses. Six themes and one constitutive pattern describe the experiences: (a) Loss of a symbol and regaining new meaning, (b) Disaster without patients, (c) Coordinating with and without organizations, (d) Rediscovering the pride in nursing, (e) Traumatic Stress, and (f) Preparing for the future. The constitutive pattern is that nursing enables a humanitarian disaster response.

Redefining life while forestalling death: living with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator after a sudden cardiac death experience.

Secondary analysis is a resourceful approach for making further use of existing data sets to answer questions not previously addressed or to expand on content not specifically examined in the original study. Using Heideggerian hermeneutics, the author analyzed transcripts of the stories of individuals with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) from three of her earlier phenomenological studies to obtain a description of the experience of living with an ICD after a sudden cardiac death experience. Three related themes emerged: (a) losing control: technology as lifesaving yet changing everything; (b) getting on with living: regaining control or conditional acceptance; and (c) creating a new vision: transformation or tenuous truce.