Life stories of families with a terminally ill child

Family units with a terminally ill child have a tendency to withdraw and this isolation may lead to problems in their mental health. A tendency with psychologists, clergy and helpers from other professions is to act as ideal experts on the lives of saddened people. From painful personal experience,...

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Main Authors: S Hechter, M Poggenpoel, C Myburgh
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: AOSIS 2001-09-01
Series:Curationis
Online Access:https://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/article/view/830
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author S Hechter
M Poggenpoel
C Myburgh
author_facet S Hechter
M Poggenpoel
C Myburgh
author_sort S Hechter
collection DOAJ
description Family units with a terminally ill child have a tendency to withdraw and this isolation may lead to problems in their mental health. A tendency with psychologists, clergy and helpers from other professions is to act as ideal experts on the lives of saddened people. From painful personal experience, this does not seem to enable acquiescence. Therefore, the aim of research on families with terminally ill children, was to explore and describe their lives and to develop an approach to facilitate their families to obtain acquiescence. In this article however, attention will be given to the life-world of families with terminally ill children. The research consists of two phases. In phase one the experiences of four families with terminally ill children are explored and described by means of phenomenological, unstructured, in-depth interviews. In phase two an acquiescence approach, which was designed for educational psychologists to facilitate families with terminally ill children to achieve acquiscence, is described. This approach is based on results from phase one. This article focuses on phase one. In this phase four families were interviewed individually, in the privacy of their homes. The interviews were audiotaped, and were transcribed for the purpose of data gathering. The data was analysed according to Tesch’s method and a literature control was performed to verify the results. Guba’s model for the validity of qualitative research was used.
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spelling doaj.art-16df0da3965a418d99b7c3be5fa3ba792022-12-21T22:38:33ZengAOSISCurationis0379-85772223-62792001-09-01242546110.4102/curationis.v24i2.830717Life stories of families with a terminally ill childS Hechter0M Poggenpoel1C Myburgh2Faculty of Education and Nursing, RAUFaculty of education and nursing, RAUFaculty of education andnursing, RAUFamily units with a terminally ill child have a tendency to withdraw and this isolation may lead to problems in their mental health. A tendency with psychologists, clergy and helpers from other professions is to act as ideal experts on the lives of saddened people. From painful personal experience, this does not seem to enable acquiescence. Therefore, the aim of research on families with terminally ill children, was to explore and describe their lives and to develop an approach to facilitate their families to obtain acquiescence. In this article however, attention will be given to the life-world of families with terminally ill children. The research consists of two phases. In phase one the experiences of four families with terminally ill children are explored and described by means of phenomenological, unstructured, in-depth interviews. In phase two an acquiescence approach, which was designed for educational psychologists to facilitate families with terminally ill children to achieve acquiscence, is described. This approach is based on results from phase one. This article focuses on phase one. In this phase four families were interviewed individually, in the privacy of their homes. The interviews were audiotaped, and were transcribed for the purpose of data gathering. The data was analysed according to Tesch’s method and a literature control was performed to verify the results. Guba’s model for the validity of qualitative research was used.https://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/article/view/830
spellingShingle S Hechter
M Poggenpoel
C Myburgh
Life stories of families with a terminally ill child
Curationis
title Life stories of families with a terminally ill child
title_full Life stories of families with a terminally ill child
title_fullStr Life stories of families with a terminally ill child
title_full_unstemmed Life stories of families with a terminally ill child
title_short Life stories of families with a terminally ill child
title_sort life stories of families with a terminally ill child
url https://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/article/view/830
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