“It’s like having an evil twin”: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lifeworld of a person with Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Background: This paper offers an understanding of the lifeworld of a person with Parkinson’s Disease derived from interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Aims: The paper has two main aims: firstly, to demonstrate how a focus on individual experience chimes with and can inform current ideas of a more personalised humanised form of healthcare for people living with Parkinson’s disease; and secondly, to demonstrate how an IPA study can illuminate particularity whilst being able to make, albeit cautiously, more general knowledge claims that can inform wider caring practices. Methods: It achieves these aims through the detailed description and interpretation of one person’s experience of living with Parkinson's disease using the IPA approach. Results: Three analytic themes point to how the various constituents of the lifeworld, such as embodiment, selfhood, temporality and relationality are made manifest. These enable the IPA researcher to make well-judged inferences, which can have value beyond the individual case. Conclusions: A key feature of IPA is its commitment to an idiographic approach that recognises the value of understanding a situated experience from the perspective of a particular person or persons.