Chronic cancer patients (CCPs) pay attention and act in response to diverse bodily sensations they experience in everyday life after a cancer episode. Here, we analyse how North Norwegian CCPs use their familiar surroundings in an effort to counter bad mood, anxiety and symptoms of relapse and to strengthen their health. The core participants of the anthro- pological fieldwork over the course of one ...

Little is known about how people living in the aftermath of cancer treatment experience and manage worries about possible signs of cancer relapse, not as an individual enterprise but as socially embedded management. One-year ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in a coastal village of under 3000 inhabitants in northern Norway. Ten villagers who had undergone cancer treatment from six months to five ...

Patients with chronic fatigue receive advice to improve symptom management and well-being. This advice is based on ideas of self-management and is conveyed during clinical assessment as “activity regulation.” Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a hospital clinic in Norway, we show how these patients attempt to demonstrate their competences and everyday concerns, and how the ideology of self-management ...

Purpose - Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) is a multifaceted condition, and many women live with CPP without receiving any explanation for their complex symptoms. A multimodal approach including physiotherapy is the recommended treatment. To increase the limited knowledge of what is beneficial in physiotherapy, this article aims to explore women’s experiences of Norwegian psychomotor physiotherapy (NPMP) ...

To understand the concerns and challenges faced by general practitioners (GPs) and respiratory physicians about primary care management of acute exacerbations in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). 21 focus group discussions (FGDs) were performed in seven countries with a Grounded Theory approach. Each country performed three rounds of FGDs. Primary and secondary care in ...

<p><i>Background</i>: Early adolescence is considered a critical period for the development of chronic and recurrent medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), and referrals and system-initiated patient trajectories often lead to an excess of examinations and hospitalizations in the cross-section between mental and somatic specialist care for this group of patients. Dimensions of the relationship and ...

<p>Background: Smokers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) seem to be a special subgroup of smokers that have a more urgent need to quit smoking but might find it more difficult to do so. This study aimed to explore which justifications for tobacco smoking and experiences of quitting were commonly shared in smokers with and without COPD, and which, if any, were specific to smokers ...

Little is known about the perspectives of young people suffering from medically unexplained symptoms. This study aims to explore the experiences and strategies of young Norwegians related to incipient and persistent health complaints affecting everyday life functioning. The study draws on field notes, video material and interview transcripts from a multi-sited ethnographic study of healthcare services ...

<b>Purpose:</b> To explore the decision-making of general practitioners (GPs) concerning treatment with antibiotics and/or oral corticosteroids and hospitalization for COPD patients with exacerbations.<br> <b>Methods:</b> Thematic analysis of seven focus groups with 53 GPs from urban and rural areas in Norway, Germany, Wales, Poland, Russia, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong.<br> <b>Results:</b> ...

This article explores the process of interpreting bodily sensations after completed cancer treatment. We base our analysis on repeated interviews over a period of 12 months with eight participants who had different cancer diagnoses. By using the concepts of ‘sensa- tion schemas’ and ‘sensation scripts’, we explore how sensation schemas of cancer dominated in the first period, while schemas of late ...