The process of families creating meaning of chronic illness and the medical community

Abstract

Families who have to cope with chronic illness or any other medical issue are often stressed beyond normal developmental stage compared to other families within that same developmental stage. Families who face medical issues may also be forced to accommodate other people and professions outside of their family (such as doctors, specialists, nurses and social services). Whether families acknowledge it or not, they incorporate their interactions with these “outside” people and assigns meaning to these interactions about how they view these “outside” people. There have been many models that address how families can build more positive relationships with the medical community (McDaniel, Hepworth, and Doherty, 1992; Roland, 1994). Other theoretical models address how to create a collaborative relationship between the medical community and other specialists (Seaburn, Lorenz, Gunn, Gawinski, and Mauksch, 1994; Barnard and Alfuth, in press; Jacobs, 1993; McDaniel, Hepworth, and Doherty, 1992). However, these models have not yet demonstrated the impact of the medical community has in shaping families’ meanings of their medical condition and their interactions with professional services and community supports. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how families process the meaning of the presenting medical issues as well as their interactions with the medical community. Joan Patterson and Ann Garwick (1994) published a theoretical model that demonstrated how families make meaning on multiple levels. This study will focus on the adult caregivers within a defined family, such as the parents. The family must have at least one adult caregiver and one child that has a chronic illness. There will only be two families studied using a qualitative format of study. These families were selected based on the availability to the researcher and willingness to share their story with the researcher. The researcher has developed a questionnaire that contains questions of how the family makes their meaning of the chronic illness, medical community and other aspects of their life that contributes to their overall definition of their family.