Clinical nurses' characterizations of patient coping problems

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Qualitative Research
• Patient Coping

Background:

• Assessing patient and family coping is crucial in nursing practice.
• Existing diagnostic frameworks may not fully capture the nuances of coping as observed by nurses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore how hospital nurses interpret and diagnose patient and family coping mechanisms.
• To compare nurses' diagnostic data with established nursing diagnostic categories.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study utilizing taped interviews with nurses.
• Grounded theory and analytic induction for data analysis.
• Comparison of transcribed data with North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) constructs.

Main Results:

• Nurses' descriptions of coping phenomena did not align with NANDA's constructs.
• Nurses' assessments of coping aligned with transactional theory.
• The term "ineffective coping" was seldom used by nurses, who focused on context-specific, appropriate responses.

Conclusions:

• Current NANDA diagnostic constructs may require refinement to better reflect nurses' clinical observations of coping.
• Transactional theory provides a useful framework for understanding nurses' assessments of patient and family coping.
• Nursing practice emphasizes context-dependent coping, often avoiding the label "ineffective coping".