Existential absence: the lived experience of family members during their older loved one's delirium

Title: Existential absence: the lived experience of family members during their older loved one's delirium
Creator: Day, Jenny; Higgins, Isabel
Relation: Qualitative Health Research Vol. 25, Issue 12, p. 1700-1718
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732314568321
Publisher: Sage
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2015
Description: When older people develop delirium, their demeanor changes; they often behave in ways that are out of character and seem to inhabit another world. Despite this, little is known about the experiences of family members who are with their older loved one at this time. This article reports a phenomenological study that involved in-depth interviews with 14 women whose older loved one had delirium. Analysis and interpretation of the data depict the women's experiences as "Changing family portraits: Sudden existential absence during delirium," capturing the way family members lose the taken-for-granted presence of their familiar older loved one and confront a stranger during delirium.
Subject: delirium; families; nursing; older people; phenomenology; caregiving; health care; illness and disease; experiences; interviews; semistructured; lived experience; Merleau-Ponty
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1334406
Identifier: uon:27287
Identifier: ISSN:1049-7323
Language: eng
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