Abstract
This study aims to clarify family difficulties and nursing encountered when a patient with cerebral stroke induced consciousness disorder leaves the ICU for a general ward. Respondents to the survey were selected from people who visited hospitals because their family members had undergone emergency surgery. Seven individuals gave written consent to cooperate in the research. We joined and observed the families when they visited the patients in the ICU and when they were being informed by doctors, and conducted a semi-constitutive interview with them three times after the patients left the ICU. We also acquired some data from medical records. We then made a qualitative analysis using a phenomenological approach referring to A. Giorgi's method. The result indicated that the transition period when patients were moved from the ICU to a general ward was classified into four periods:preparatory period for the transition, starting period of the transition, duration period of the transition, completion period of the transition. We also found that the families tended to have the following thoughts in the transition period: " Thoughts about the life and treatment environment of patients," "thoughts about the consciousness disorder, " " thoughts about family life and hospital life," "thoughts about image of patients" and "thoughts about the economic burden." The tendency of the thoughts that the families had in the transition period was clarified by constructing a "structural diagram of the thoughts that the families of consciousness disorder patients had in the transition period," which schematically presented the essential meaning of each of the four periods.
