A lifeworld theory-led action research process for humanizing services: improving “what matters” to older people to enhance humanly sensitive care

Abstract

Purpose: Using a theory-led action research process test applicability of humanizing care theory to better understand what matters to people and assess how the process can improve human dimensions of health care services. Consideration of the value of this process to guide enhancements in humanly sensitive care and investigate transferable benefits of the participatory strategy for improving human dimensions of health care services. Methods: Action research with service users, practitioners and academics, with participatory processes led through the application of theory via a novel Humanizing Care Framework in two diverse clinical settings. Results: Participants engaged in a theory-led participatory process, understood and valued the framework seeing how it relates to own experiences. Comparative analysis of settings identified transferable processes with potential to enhance human dimensions of care more generally. We offer transferable strategy with contextualized practical details of humanizing processes and outcomes that can contribute to portable pathways to enhance dignity in care through application of humanizing care theory in practice. Conclusion: The theoretical framework is a feasible and effective guide to enhance human dimensions of care. Our rigorous participative process facilitates sharing of patient and staff experience, sensitizing practitioners' understandings and helping develop new ways of providing theoretically robust person-centred care based on lifeworld approaches.

‘Getting back to the matters’: Why the existential matters in care

“…Three kinds of knowledge are already integrated here: These three emphases, hand, head and heart cannot be absolutely separated from each other, and are already fluid and integrated in practice, as all practitioners intuitively know. And all of this strikes at what is needed for a capacity to care [6, 7].…”

Knowing-in-action that centres humanising relationships on stroke units: an appreciative action research study

“…Embodied knowing in the context of humanising lifeworld-led care theories has been described within a small number of phenomenological studies into stroke care and rehabilitation (Hydén & Antelius, 2011;Nyström, 2006;Nyström, 2009;Suddick, Cross, Vuoskoski, Stew & Galvin, 2019;Sundin & Jansson, 2003;Sundin, Jansson & Norberg, 2002), with the majority of these studies working with people with communication disability to explore non-verbal understandings in healthcare relationships. However, only two other known studies have researched the practical translation of embodied relational knowing using action research methods to inform stroke unit relationships (Dewar & Nolan, 2013;Galvin et al, 2020), and our study contributes further evidence to this emerging area.…”

Ageing with neuromuscular disease: Implications for a lifeworld‐led care through a humanising approach

“…To concretise what lifeworld‐led care is it is crucial to understand the notion of ‘lifeworld’. On this matter, we draw on a study, which examines the usefulness of a lifeworld‐led approach to better understand what matters to older people in enhancing humanly sensitive care (Galvin et al, 2020). Galvin et al state that ‘the lifeworld’ refers to a particular view of the person as humanely living in the seamlessness of everyday life which includes four experiential dimensions.…”