This dissertation explores the question “how does a person who is a cancer patient finds their way to being a dying person?” Through the lens of modernism (Giddens), discourse analysis (Foucault), and philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer) the author examines how the institution of cancer control is constituted, and how the cancer patient is co-constructed by this system and people entering into it as people needing cancer treatment. Language is explored to uncover meanings and discourses which help shape this experience and self-narrative of the cancer patients who face leaving the cancer control system and do or do not find their way to palliative care systems. From this perspective the more solitary and less shaped experience of ‘unbecoming a cancer patient’ is explored for those cancer patients whose treatment has failed. The liminal space between the expert systems of cancer control and palliative care is what is revealed and problematized. What is explored is what this liminal space between these two systems is, and how people who find or lose themselves in this space at this time might be met, without succumbing to the modernist temptation to create yet another expert system to manage what is explored. What is at stake for people at this time is their own self-narrative going on, and it was found for some people in a liminal space this self-narrative faltered. It is revealed that nurses are best positioned epistemologically to support people at this time, and the question of where this support ought to happen is explored in terms of the ideological fit within current health system alignments. This work adds an important theoretical rendering of the term liminality and has important implications for person centred nursing care and health system redesign. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3398 |
| Date | 07 July 2011 |
| Creators | Syme, Charlotte Ann |
| Contributors | Purkis, Mary Ellen |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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