Qualitative Health Research

To illuminate the lives of women who are substance abusers, a life history study was conducted on 26 women in treatment for substance abuse. Data collection for this research, including "life line" exercises, focus groups, interviews with women and treatment counselors, and written segment exercises, was therapeutic. Themes of violence (rape and incest), abuse, male dominance, dependence, motherhood issues, and depression emerged as typical in their lives. The experiential sharing of many aspects of their life stories enabled the participants to reflect on their own patterns of drug dependency and view similarities and contradictions in the lives of other women who had abused drugs. It enabled them to gain insight into their own vulnerability to substance abuse and understand that such vulnerability in women is a synergistic phenomenon.

Although infertility has been described as an experience with long-term implications for the well-being of couples affected by it, few studies have examined any part of the aftermath of infertility. This article describes the ways in which infertility shapes the pregnancy course in couples who have struggled to conceive. The findings are drawn from 162 interviews conducted with 60 couples (41 infertile and a comparison group of 19 fertile) expecting a child, who were participants in a longitudinal field study involving both childbearing and adopting couples. During the course of the study, 63 pregnancies were observed. The core variable distinguishing the infertile from the fertile couples' pregnancies was relinquishing infertility. Beyond this variable, infertility emerged as important, but only one of a number of factors altering the experience of contemporary childbearing.

To discover how district nurses handled cases of elder abuse, 23 Swedish district nurses were interviewed. District nurses reported that their dealing with abusive families was like walking a fine line and that they had an overwhelming feeling of ambiguity. They experienced conflicting feelings and questions: Should they approach the families or not? did abuse really occur or not? and finally, should they intervene or not? In relation to these conflicts, the district nurses experienced powerlessness, and some of them decided to "stay with" the elderly person and comfort them instead of confronting the family. The rational idea behind this decision was described as obtaining and keeping the family's trust. Thus it seems urgent to counsel district nurses dealing with an abusive family and also to offer them the necessary education and support.

The purpose of this study was to investigate lifelong patterns of physical activity and processes of managing physical activity among 24 employed American Black women using ethnographic methods of intensive interviewing and participant observation. This naturalistic field study was framed by a cultural-ecological orientation focusing on understanding and describing individual/environmental transactions influencing physical activity practices. Physical activity, shaped by early family experiences and later peer group activities, was defined as routine activities of everyday life and consciously planned and practiced exercise. In adulthood, alternating periods of physical activity and sedentariness were common.

The discourse on acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is dominated by the rational-technical language of science and biomedicine. Lost in the rigid authoritarianism of science are the voices of those who suffer with HIV and AIDS. Mothers whose sons die of AIDS are caught in this web of suffering. This article privileges the voices of these women. Three narratives of suffering are explored in detail. Narrative analysis reveals that macro- and microforces are intimately interwoven in the suffering experience. The narratives provided by these women and this study of them advance the theoretical understanding of human suffering, a concept largely ignored within the discipline of nursing. Finally, the study demonstrates that nurse-researchers and the discipline of nursing must attend to human suffering by becoming engaged in the life-worlds of patients.