Search results

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.

This paper aims to explore the lived experience of people with a chronic non-healing wound and to explore what it means to live with a chronic wound.

A descriptive phenomenological study design was adopted to explore the living experience of person with chronic wound. A sample of 15 individuals of both genders was selected using a purposive sampling technique. To collect data, in-depth interviews were conducted, and all the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using the seven-step process described by Colaizzi (1978).

The findings were organized into 6 themes clusters and 12 themes. The six themes clusters were limiting mobility; receiving care; explaining causes of wounds; contending with chronic illnesses; adapting and mal-adapting; and economic burden of the wound.

Chronic wound had a profound impact on participants’ lives by affecting their activities of daily living, their mobility, their income and their personal relationships.

Understanding the lived experiences of people with chronic wounds is crucial for health-care providers, including nurses. Investigating the chronic wound experience has become even more pressing given the projected increase in the number of elderly individuals and those with chronic illnesses such as diabetes mellitus. In Jordan, for example, the prevalence of diabetes mellitus is 17.1%, and it is projected to increase by 2050.

Contrary to want-based services, customer participation has got lesser attention in high-credence services like health care. Customer participation for patients with chronic illnesses could be life-threatening and goes beyond the service organization’s physical environment. Realizing the importance of transformative service research in health-care services, this study aims to propose and validate the conceptualization of customer participation for patients with chronic illnesses.

The study uses sequential exploratory research design with mixed method research. The first phase is a qualitative exploration of the nature and meaning of customer participation by synthesizing theory and insights from semi-structured interviews (N = 75) with doctors, patients and paramedical staff. Next, survey data (N = 690) of patients with chronic illnesses is used to validate the proposed conceptualization. Finally, nomological validity was also tested on an additional survey data set (N = 362) using SEM and FsQCA.

The findings reveal that health-care customer participation is a three-dimensional behavioral construct in which a customer can participate by sharing information, involving in decision-making and ensuring compliance. The study also demonstrates that customer participation is a critical driver of satisfaction with life and perceived control on illness.

The research provides policy guidelines for owners and operators of health-care organizations in developing frameworks for collecting participation data, which can be used in strategies for seeking customer participation.

The research conceptualizes and validates “customer participation” as a multidimensional higher-order construct for patients with chronic illnesses, rarely focused in services marketing and management research on health care.

This study aims to synthesize the existing serious games designed to promote mental health in adolescents with chronic illnesses.

This study conducted a review following the guidelines of Joanna Briggs Institute and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. Searches were conducted in databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, cumulative index to nursing and allied health literature, PsycINFO, China national knowledge infrastructure Wanfang, VIP Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals and SinoMed from inception to February 12, 2023.

A total of 14 studies (describing 14 serious games) for improving the mental health of adolescents with chronic diseases were included. Of all the included games, 12 were not described as adopting any theoretical framework or model. The main diseases applicable to serious games are cancer, type 1 diabetes and autism spectrum disorder. For interventional studies, more than half of the study types were feasibility or pilot trials. Furthermore, the dosage of serious games also differs in each experiment. For the game elements, most game elements were in the category “reward and punishment features” (n = 50) and last was “social features” (n = 4).

Adolescence is a critical period in a person’s physical and mental development throughout life. Diagnosed with chronic diseases during this period will cause great trauma to the adolescents and their families. Serious game interventions have been developed and applied to promote the psychological health field of healthy adolescents. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to scope review the serious game of promoting mental health in the population of adolescents with chronically ill. At the same time, the current study also extracted and qualitatively analyzed the elements of the serious game.

Chronic illnesses often go unnoticed mainly due to their invisibility and lack of understanding both at home and in the workplace. In this chapter, I use an autoethnographic approach to engage with my “emotionally charged” lived experiences of living and working with a stigmatized chronic illness – irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) – in a highly patriarchal Pashtun society where women are expected to perform various social roles despite of illness and are often silenced to male domination. IBS is a functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abdominal pain, abnormal bowel function, and bloating, in the absence of any structural abnormalities, and has a significant impact on one’s life. As I navigate through my experiences of suffering from a chronic illness and the emotional labor involved therein, I shed light on the challenges I face as a woman in managing work and life and as I silence my pain and emotions to fit into the roles of a “professional” academic, a “good” wife, a “good” daughter, a “good” sister-in-law, a “good” daughter-in-law, and so forth. I have used both the lens of stigma to reflect my sufferings and normalization to demonstrate my resilience and (re)adjustment to the new life. In doing so, pain and emotions do leak out during intense situations but silencing chronic illness is mostly strategic as it protects us from being excluded, marginalized, and stigmatzed both at work and home.

We are currently experiencing, in western societies, a new reality in health systems, the emergence of an epidemic of chronic diseases, which test and raise new challenges to the health systems. This exponential increase in chronic diseases has not been accompanied by updated training of health professionals in this area. The chronic illness implies a bilateral relationship, of commitment and compromise for life, in which the involvement of the sick person must be the rule. The scope of therapeutic education (TE) is making the person autonomous and helping them to maintain or improve their quality of life. To treat patients with chronic disease, health professionals need to adapt their knowledge to their new role in the therapeutic relationship. As for the methodology, a participative observational methodology will be carried out with the training of health professionals who work in this area. It is a descriptive work based on studies and works published by the main schools working in this area, with emphasis on the School of Geneve. The purpose is to identify the problem of chronic diseases, the challenges that patients and health professionals face and how to build educational projects, exploring the use of educational tools, including digital technology.

With the spread of information communication technologies (ICTs) at work, online voice has become an emerging form of employee voice. Online voice is a double-edged behavior for organizations and employees. The purpose of this paper is to examine a model in which online voice is positively correlated with workplace cyberbullying and to examine the moderating role of chronic job strain and moral efficacy on that correlation.

A total of 760 cases from 152 full-time Chinese workers in public sector employment were collected through the experience sampling method.

The results showed that online voice is positively correlated with workplace cyberbullying on a daily basis. Chronic job strain amplifies this relationship, while moral efficacy buffers it. Furthermore, the amplifying effect of chronic job strain is mediated by a lack of moral efficacy.

This research has implications for understanding the boundary conditions of the relationship between online voice and workplace cyberbullying.

This study explores how social partners contribute to the successful return to work (RTW) of individuals affected by chronic diseases, employing the framework of actor-centred institutionalism.

This paper adopts a comparative case study methodology to assess the role of social partners in the workplace (re-)integration of people with chronic disease in Belgium and Italy, both of which represent well-developed industrial relations systems yet having different institutional and policy frameworks on RTW.

Institutional factors are found to affect the type and degree of social partners' commitment and contribution to RTW. Differences in their commitment can be explained by their varied degrees of integration in public policy formation, which explain their different preferred stages of interactions in this field: national tripartite social dialogue for Belgium; and sectoral collective bargaining for Italy. Unsatisfactory outcomes of social partners’ contribution in facilitating RTW processes are attributed to the fragmentation of the legal framework and uneven development of collective bargaining in Italy. In Belgium, the authors find the presence of cumbersome RTW procedures downplaying the role of the worker representative.

This paper adds empirical evidence to the limited literature on the role of social partners in facilitating RTW and sheds light on how to improve the current policy context. It suggests involving the social partners in the development of a comprehensive public policy framework, which should allow for an early, flexible and multi-stakeholder (re-)integration procedure following chronic disease.

Despite the potential of virtual fitting rooms (VFRs) to enhance the consumer experience, their adoption is in the preliminary stages. Little is known about inherent reasons why consumers would adopt VFRs. As consumers' attributional processes can be influenced by their enduring chronic traits, this study aims to investigate the influence of chronic regulatory focus on consumers' VFR adoptions via consumers' perceptions of value provided by VFRs. Additionally, the mediating effects of perceived functional and experiential values were examined. Further, the moderating effect of prior VFR experience was tested to allow for variations in consumer experiences.

Data were collected via an online survey of 480 consumers who have at least heard of VFRs via convenience sampling. Established measures were utilized to develop the survey questionnaire. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling to test the main model with mediation effects as well as multi-group comparisons to test the moderating effect.

Empirical results revealed that respective chronic regulatory foci, as preconceived factors that drive consumers' differences in processing, exerted significant influences on consumers' perceptions of VFRs, which, in turn, positively influenced their adoption intention. Also, perceived values mediated the relationship between regulatory foci and consumers' adoption intention. Further, prior VFR experience moderated the relationship between regulatory focus and perceived value.

The paper empirically tested the importance of chronic regulatory foci in understanding consumers' cognitive and affective attributional processes, explaining inherent psychological reasons why consumers would (not) adopt VFRs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the lived experiences of the constraints of older adult family caregivers with chronic diseases in caring for and accessing health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study used the descriptive phenomenology qualitative method. The sampling method was purposive sampling involving 16 older adult family caregivers.

The results of this study showed three themes such as difficulties in health services in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic (complaints of services provided by doctors, older adult treatment control problems and difficulty getting to hospital health facilities); difficulties accompanying taking older adult medicine (older adult non-compliance response to taking medication and older adult medicine assistance); and psychosocial complaints caring for and accompanying the older adult (negative emotions for the older adult, difficulty interacting with the older adult and the economic burden of caring for the older adult).

Barriers to family caregivers in caring for older adults with chronic diseases can help health-care service providers understand and support families caring for and assisting older adults, which may contribute to the quality of life and care for both family caregivers and older adults.

This study showed that Indonesian family caregivers faced difficulties caring for and living with older adults with chronic diseases during the pandemic. Family caregivers’ experiences are essential when developing an intervention to support and manage health care for older adults with chronic illnesses.