Abstract
Purpose: After the operation of head and neck cancer is which holds various obstacles which influence social life and eating habits. Furthermore, the experience person and the family are faced actually which acquired the obstacle by the life after leaving hospital. So they are living with suffering held. In this study, it searches for changes produced in elderly head and neck cancer survivors and their family that held the new obstacle by following the process of pattern recognition together in outpatient nursing.
Methods: The design of this study is research as praxis. It was hermeneutic and dialectic using Newman's research guidelines. The participants were head and neck cancer survivors who had undergone surgery within one year after leaving hospital, and their family members. All participants gave written informed consent to participation in this study.
Findings: The participants were 4 male survivors in their 70s and their wives. Two–three interviews were performed. Participants expressed the occurrence which is the most interested by experience of the head and neck cancer now. They have recognized husband and wife's pattern from self-insight, and the caring between families and to the others was seen. In the process of pattern recognition, they told the future route which is useful as cancer survivor, and it changed so that it might live with a new viewpoint.
Conclusions: Even if participants acquired the obstacle at the elderly, they came to create the future life which is useful with cancer. This nursing intervention has a large meaning also as the cancer rehabilitation nursing to the experience person with head and neck cancer and their family who held a new obstacle and difficulty at the elderly, and support at the time of going to hospital regularly.
