An Analysis of Nursing Students' Perceptions on the Illness Experiences of Patient

Abstract

An analysis of students'imagination of other's illness was carried out among 15 senior students of a university nursing program . Students who were asked to entend to be sick were assigned to write a report on their perceptions of the illness. The senior students' perceptions were compared with the ones investigated when they were sophomores.

There were 49 statements of the illness experience in students'reports and they were grouped under 12 classifications . Content analysis of the portion of the report revealed the following two categories :1) Understanding pain through sympathy(67%)such as enguish, anxienty, fretfulness and etc. 2)Understanding through interprtation(33%).

These two kinds of understanding are manifested in sophomore's imagination as well as in seniors. In sophomore's reports, "anxiety", accounts for 93 percent of "understanding pain through sympapty", while "anxiety""pain""fretfulness" have equal ratio in seniors'. The interpretation of experience of illness was objectively reported . The change, was mainly related with clinical practice.