Abstract

SA DO CEU, Maria  and  NABAIS SOFIA, Ana. Boundaries between Health and Disease for People Living with Chronic Disease. NTQR [online]. 2021, vol.8, pp.637-644.  Epub Dec 02, 2021. ISSN 2184-7770.  https://doi.org/10.36367/ntqr.8.2021.637-644.

Living with a chronic disease like osteoarthritis is a big challenge. This disease compromises functionality alters the body image, and its evolution can lead the person to feel pain and suffering. Understanding how these people live with their disease is a contribution to nursing practice. This research aims to understand the experiences of health and disease for people living with osteoarticular disease. A descriptive study was carried out with a qualitative methodology of phenomenological orientation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen (15) participants with osteoarthritis. From their analysis, it emerged as a result that the experience of chronic illness has been considered in the structure of the human being as a way of life. The experience of health and illness represents a process of living in constant movement and is portrayed as a dialectic in which the suffering self is renewed to continue to exist. The experience of health and illness is an existential reality in which suffering, and well-being are not denied, but integrated by the Self. This study highlights how this chronic disease is experienced, highlighting the experience of being neither healthy nor sick, as a person living with a sick body. It highlights and explains the concepts: I as a human being; Me and suffering; the dialectic of renewal and the existential continuity where the understanding of pain and suffering makes sense to people living with chronic diseases, suggesting that hope is the catalyst for reconciling borders and human experiences of health and disease.

Keywords : Chronic Disease; Osteoarthritis; Disease; Health; Phenomenology; Nursing..

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