The first process subtheme describes the progression of healing as moving from a physical focus, to a mental focus, to an integration of the event into one’s life, and then a return to the world. There is overlap in each of these stages but the last two can happen almost simultaneously. The second subtheme is a privacy progression, with the need for privacy greatly increased after returning home from the hospital. This need for privacy decreased in the months following surgery, until a new privacy balanced was established.
These privacy needs appeared to be a reaction to the loss of privacy during the hospitalization experience. Emotional change occurred in three patterns: anxiety > elation > satisfaction >; anxiety > frustration > satisfaction; and anxiety > elation > frustration > satisfaction. Participants identified specific events that were healing milestones and they experienced some changes in their perception of time. These last two subthemes were not strong but were included because they were part of the data.
It is unknown at this point whether the three substantive themes of healing and the process component are involved in more general healing experiences (i. e. , different types of illness), whether they are prerequisites for healing to occur, whether an optimal healing process has these elements while an unsatisfactory healing process does not, or whether these elements have any relevance to different healing experiences, other than recovery from surgery. The literature was examined with these questions in mind.
The reviewing the literature it was found that the model of healing was not supported in its entirely. Some of the healing conceptualizations found in Chapter I did come close to a generalized version of participants’ conceptualizations but not to the specific patterns found in the data. Participants had their own conceptualization of healing as evidenced by their unhesitant ability to use the word and their ability to thoroughly discuss the concept. As discussed in Chapter I, the word healing is not used in the majority of the nursing or medical literature except as a physical process.
Comparison of the participants’ conceptualizations with the extrapolated conceptualizations of nursing and medicine revealed participants having a view closer to the conceptualization by nurses. They did not focus on the injury, the incision or the surgical repair as medicine might. At times they insisted that they did not consider themselves ill. Their conceptualization of healing included physical, emotional, spiritual, interpersonal, historical, and environmental issues.
As nurses view their approach to be holistic it follows that the holistic conceptualization of healing would also have similarities to the participants’ descriptions. In the holistic conceptualization, found in Chapter I, it was discussed that the goal of healing is to restore the dynamic balance between mind, body and spirit. The participants related to this idea in the theme of Achieving Balance. The holistic conceptualization also included restoring a sense of connectedness to the universe. Participants described this in “returning to the world” that was one phase of the “stages of healing” as depicted.