Between suffering and redemption. Religious motives in Jewish and Christian cancer patients' coping

The aim of this research was to study the potential influence and significance of Jewish and Christian patients' religion on their coping with cancer. After intensive methodological experimentation, the Interpretive Biography-approach, an inductive unstructured research method was applied to collect and analyse the data. In this way 100 Jewish and Christian patients were interviewed. Document analysis was performed when patients' diaries were available. Comparative analysis of the patients' stories made possible the identification of a number of religious motives from which the patients drew meaning to explain their suffering. The findings show that Jewish and Christian patients utilize the same religious motives. The relevance of this research for nurses lies in the finding that, for many patients, their religiousness has great potential as a resource and it should therefore be supported by nurses.