Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Rural Appalachian Person And Family Decision Making At End Of Life, Mary Lou Clark Fornehed

Doctoral Dissertations

The dynamics of delivering care to persons at end of life (EOL) have dramatically changed in the last twenty years. Improved management of chronic illness and provision of aggressive life sustaining measures for an illness once deemed fatal are more common, significantly increasing longevity. While it is estimated that more than 40 million persons with life-limiting illness worldwide are candidates for some form of palliative or end-of-life care (EOLC), less than 14% of them will receive it.

When coping with life-limiting illness, people and their families are asked to make many complex and difficult decisions about EOL, palliative, or hospice …

A Grounded Theory Inquiry Into Crying In Women Dealing With The Emotional Stress Of Personal Crisis, Mary Bess Griffith

Doctoral Dissertations

The belief that crying leads to healing is so widely held and of such longstanding that many healthcare professionals—including nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists—accept it as fact even though there is little substantiating scientific evidence. Crying is commonly believed to be an essential factor in restoring mind-body equilibrium after physical and/or emotional trauma has been experienced. If, as has been hypothesized by many scientists and healthcare practitioners, emotional crying is a biopsychosocial healing modality, then specifics of its therapeutic praxis, including limitations and ambiguities, should be incorporated into nursing education and practice. In this grounded theory study, the meaning and …