Julie Crane

The impact of prostate cancer on men's everyday life

Prostate cancer impacts on the daily lives of men, particularly their physical and emotional health, relationships and social life. This paper highlights how men cope with disease and treatment and the strategies they employ to manage their diagnosis alongside daily life. Twenty-seven men were interviewed at different stages in their disease pathway: nine men prior to radiotherapy, eight men at 6-8 months post radiotherapy and 10 men at 12-18 months post radiotherapy. A grounded theory approach was used to collect and analyse the data. Regardless of the point at which they were interviewed four areas emerged as important to the men: the pathway to diagnosis; the diagnosis; the impact of prostate cancer and its treatment on daily life; and living with prostate cancer. Prostate cancer was diagnosed using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, rectal examination and biopsy. Many men did not understand the consequences of a high PSA reading before they undertook the test. Painful investigative biopsies were viewed as the worst part of the disease experience. Radiotherapy was considered less invasive than other treatments, although preparatory regimes were associated with stress and inconvenience. Men used various strategies to deal with treatment-induced threats to their masculinity in the long term.

The impact of ‘missed care’ on the professional socialisation of nursing students: A qualitative research study

BACKGROUND Missed care is a recently described concept that is subject to an increasing amount of international nursing research. The impact of missed care is associated with poorer patient outcomes (mortality and morbidity) and poorer levels of patient satisfaction with the services provided by the hospital. Missed care has also been linked to decreased staff satisfaction and increased intention to leave. Overall disaffection amongst registered nurses has also been reported. Professional socialisation refers to the acquisition of behaviours within cultural norms, and it has been suggested that students enter a period of professional socialisation during their programme. Whilst it has been proposed that students may absorb the characteristics of those around them, to date, no empirical studies have reported the impact of missed care on student nurses. METHODS The aim of this project is to explore the impact of missed care on the professional socialisation of student nurses. A qualitative study was undertaken in one higher education institute in UK with final year pre-registration nursing degree (adult field) students. Focus group interviews, utilizing a broad topic guide, were used to collect data which was analysed using thematic analysis. FINDINGS Student nurses were aware that some planned care is missed and these findings resonated with those identified in the literature. In addition to illuminating aspects of professional socialisation, analysis yielded five themes with regards to missed care: awareness, rationale, impact, strategies to avoid and influence of missed care on career aspiration. Student nurses exposed to missed care appear to accept this as part of their professional socialisation. CONCLUSION With regards to professional socialisation, student nurses developed a pragmatic acceptance that care would be missed and that this could happen in any environment. As such they did not see missed care as influencing their career aspirations.