The experience of the cancer patients: the meaning attributed to cancer survivorship

• Grant number: 15/24143-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: June 01, 2016
• End date: November 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Nursing - Medical-Surgical Nursing
• Principal Investigator: Marcia Maria Fontão Zago
• Grantee: Rafaela Azevedo Abrantes de Oliveira Simoneti
• Supervisor: Sally Elizabeth Thorne
• Host Institution: Escola de Enfermagem de Ribeirão Preto (EERP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of British Columbia, Vancouver (UBC), Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/12058-6 - Conceptual analysis of the cancer survivorship: contribution to the knowledge of oncologic nursing, BP.DD

Abstract

Cancer is still a fearful and stigmatized disease by society one that sentences the individual to suffering and to death. However, with technological advances in the diagnosis and treatment and training of professionals, results show that there are increasing numbers of survivors with the disease. Accepting the challenge of being a cancer survivor appears to play an important role in allowing the people diagnosed with the disease to integrate this experience into their identity. However, in the meantime, it is important to recognize that words not only describe, but also build the phenomena in question. So, our aims are: to analyze the meaning attributed to cancer survivorship among adults and elderly cancer survivors using the secondary analysis; to compare the meanings attributed to cancer survivorship between the data from Brazil and Canada. To obtain the meaning of cancer survivorship, it is necessary to perform a theoretical approach that focuses cultural and contextual aspects involved in the concept. So we opted for medical anthropology, current interpretive anthropology that combines health, disease and culture. To develop this project we opted for qualitative research along with the narrative method and with the theoretical framework of the medical anthropology. We have adopted the inductive thematic analysis so that the primary data might be analyzed. At the end, for a further deepening and design of the data, we will compare the Brazilian data with Canadian data using the secondary analysis. This project will be developed in two steps, the first will be developed here in Brazil, where all the narratives built will be analyzed by me and my advisor, consequently, the first themes will be set out. During the internship, my supervisor and I will set out new research questions based on the Brazilian dataset and their results, and Canadian dataset, where we will analyze in accordance with the secondary analysis. The secondary analysis of qualitative data is the reexamination of one or more existing qualitatively derived data sets in order to pursue research questions that are distinct from those of the original inquiries. What we will do is the "analytic expansion" that is a term used to refer to the kind of study in which a researcher makes further use of a primary data set in order to ask new or emerging questions that derive from having conducted the original analysis but were not envisioned within the original scope of the primary studies aims. (AU)