Homelessness is associated with poor health and premature death. Individual’s experiencing homelessness face multiple barriers when accessing health care. Barriers to health care are not limited to administrative issues such as lack of a valid health card or clinic hours but include feeling stigmatized, not respected or marginalized when attempting to access services. These experiences can impact homeless individuals’ willingness to engage with health care providers in the future and have the potential to negatively impact the development and maintenance of a relationship with a provider. Nurses are a point of access into the health care services available to individuals experiencing homelessness and can play a key role in facilitating access to health care.
In this research, the experiences of individuals experiencing homelessness when seeking health care were explored. The approach used to guide the research was interpretive description. Interpretive description can have the effect of making one suddenly “see” something in a way that enriches one’s everyday understanding of the lived experiences (Thorne, 2008). Interpretive description while reflecting more traditional aspects of grounded theory as themes are identified and developed during research also utilized the constructivist paradigm. The constructivist paradigm with its’ focus on truth and knowledge coming from the participant supported the interactive link of the relationship between the researcher and the focus of the research on the experience of individuals who are homeless during interactions with community nurses.
This study involved in-depth tape recorded conversations with eleven men who had experienced homelessness while seeking health care in the community. The transcribed conversations were analyzed utilizing interpretive description. Each of the participant’s stories are described followed by identification of shared experiences or themes, giving insight into the phenomena of engaging with health care providers, specifically community based nurses, while experiencing homelessness. The intent is to share the lived experience and perspectives embedded in the experiences participants shared, with nurses and health care professionals in the community. The hope is that, through these stories, health-care providers, in particular nurses may develop insights and understanding that can inform both practice and education. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/4390 |
| Date | 20 December 2012 |
| Creators | Crawley Beames, Lisa |
| Contributors | Pauly, Bernadette M. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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