Understanding the Meaning Attributed to Patients’ Lived Experience Beyond a Diagnostic Label: Applications of Interpretive Phenomenology to Nursing Practice

Abstract

Unearthing the meaning patients’ attribute to their lived experience beyond a diagnostic label has profound implications to reconceptualize the caring art of nursing practice. Featured throughout this article are lessons learnt from caring for a patient who had received a stigmatizing diagnosis of liver cirrhosis. Contained within such heavily stigmatized diagnoses are various preunderstandings (e.g., negative views about substance misuse) that are often informed by dominant societal beliefs, which can impede nurses’ ability to authentically care for patients across the lifespan. Interpretive phenomenology is a philosophical tradition dedicated to the description of lived experience; this philosophy can facilitate an understanding of how things appear in the world in which they exist. By applying interpretive phenomenology to nursing practice, nurses can understand the essence that patients’ attribute to their diagnostic label by authentically exploring their lifeworld. Utilizing the philosophical underpinnings of interpretive phenomenology, this article proposes opportunities to inform the way nurses care for patients by exploring how a Gadamerian fusion of horizons and holistic approach to care can reconceptualize nursing practice. Understanding the meaning patients’ attribute to their lived experiences is a critical step to optimizing care by granting nurses the opportunity to ascribe meaning in their everyday clinical practice, which can motivate positive patient outcomes and a continuous evolution of their authentic being.