Abstract

Research has shown that preoperative stress is associated with poorer health outcomes in adults and young children, but there is little in the literature about the stress experienced by adolescents. Clinical experience, however, has shown that adolescents behave differently throughout the perioperative experience than either adults or children. For example, common behaviors of adolescent's emerging from anesthesia include combativeness, thrashing, and crying. To promote adolescent health and to provide adolescents with appropriate interventions that will support a positive surgical outcome, research is needed to discover the perceptions and meanings adolescents attribute to the perioperative experience.

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to describe and capture the meaning of perioperative experiences of adolescents. The research question for this study was "What is the meaning of the perioperative experience to adolescents?" Max van Manen's phenomenological approach especially guided uncovering the descriptions of the meanings provided by the participants through the lifeworld: lived body, lived relation, lived space, and lived time. Although the lifeworld provided a way to interpret the perioperative experience, the Neuman Systems Model (NSM) allowed for further exploration of the perioperative experience.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 3517560; ProQuest document ID: 1032964245. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Janean C. Monahan, PhD, CNOR

Sigma Membership

Theta Tau

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Phenomenology

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Perioperative Patients, Adolescents, Loss of Control, Postoperative Feelings, Stress

Advisor

Rosalind Peters

Second Advisor

Nancy George

Third Advisor

Karen Tonso

Fourth Advisor

Jean Davis

Degree

PhD

Degree Grantor

Wayne State University

Degree Year

2012

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2022-04-08

Full Text of Presentation

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