The patient’s experience in a plaster cast

SummaryPlaster casts have been used to treat fractures for over 150 years. This qualitative research describes this experience from the patient’s point of view. The aims of the study were to describe patients’ experiences in a below knee cast, establishing common themes and determining how the themes identified could inform nursing practice.A purposive sampling strategy was used; selecting participants who had been in a lower limb cast for at least 4 weeks, were over 18 years of age, treated as an out-patient and previously mobile. Data were collected using unstructured interviews which were recorded and transcribed. Individual manuscripts were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. Common themes were identified and related to the literature.Seven main themes were identified: ‘hard work’ illustrated how difficult everyday tasks became; ‘it gets you down’ described how the participants began to feel frustrated and sorry for them selves; ‘different circumstances’ showed how participants put their situation in context in order to cope. Other themes were: ‘making it better’, ‘back to normal’, ‘pain’ and ‘getting through it’.The data were further explored in relation to the Roper, Logan and Tierney’s (1996) model for nursing and Davis’ (1997) adaptation, illustrating how the five main elements of the model inter-related so that difficulties in one dimension affected the others.