The lived ICU experience of nurses, patients and family members: A phenomenological study with Merleau-Pontian perspective

SummaryAimTo describe and understand the lived intensive care unit experience of nurses, patients and family members during critical illness.BackgroundThere is a paucity of research studies in the literature conducted on the triad of nurses, patients and family members looking at the experience of critical illness and their perspective of each, from the other.MethodologyA phenomenological approach and Merleau-Ponty's existentials of corporeality, temporality, relationality and spatiality was used for this study. In-depth, open-ended interviews were, conducted and analysed using van Manen's wholistic, selective and detailed line-by-line approach.ResultsFive common themes (a) and three specific themes (b) emerged from the data: (a) family as a, unit, physical care/comfort, physiological care, psychosocial support and transformation; and, (b) advocacy, uncertainty and confidence in the nurse and the healthcare team.ConclusionExamining embodied experience of corporeality, temporality, spatiality and relationality, opens new ways for coping amongst patients and their families, as well as care giving possibilities for the, nurses. This study affirms the mutual influence amongst the family, patient and nurses during a critical, illness experience and supports the tenets of family-centred care, which mandates the purposeful, inclusion of the family in all aspects of their loved one's care.