Female spouses lived experiences of living with a husband with dementia: a qualitative study on changes in everyday life
ISSN: 1366-3666
Article publication date: 29 October 2021
Issue publication date: 28 April 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of female spouses’ lived experiences of changes in everyday life while living with a husband with dementia.
Design/methodology/approach
Nine individual interviews of female spouses were conducted in 2017. A phenomenological narrative approach was applied during data collection, and the analysis was inspired by Amedeo Giorgi’s analytic steps.
Findings
Female spouses experienced changes in their marital relationships, and found ways of managing these changes, although they realized life was marked by loneliness and distress. The identified themes reveal how female spouses experienced changes in everyday life as the disease progressed. Everyday routines gradually changed and they actively sought ways to uphold everyday life and a marital relationship.
Research limitations/implications
Research should focus on developing supportive interventions, where the people with the lived experiences in relation to dementia are involved in the research process, to better target the needs for support, when developing interventions.
Practical implications
Insight into everyday life can help health-care service providers to better the support to female spouses and contribute with more individualized support, which may contribute to the quality of care.
Originality/value
In this study, the authors disclose the invisible and silent work that takes place in an everyday life, when living with a husband with dementia during the time span of caregiving. Spouses’ experiences are important to include, when developing intervention to support spouses to better tailor the interventions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank this study’s participants to provide the authors insight into their everyday life experiences, nd Lund Holm Thomsen, Cand. Scient. Soc, Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University - between Louise and PhD, Post-doc, for sufficient supervision to elicit narratives. The authors thank the Public Health and Epidemiology Group, from Aalborg University, for insightful discussions, and Tine Curtis, Centre for Applied Health Research, Aalborg Municipality, for funding this study.Declaration of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest, and the funding partners did not have any influence on the results or in writing the manuscript.Ethical considerations: Anonymity and confidentiality were obtained according to the ethical standards of the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and the National Ethical Standards (World Medical Association, 2018), and this study was registered with the Danish Data Protection Agency, record number 016/899/10–0225. Informed written consent was obtained before the interviews. The audiotaped interviews were destroyed after transcription, and any personal information that could identify the individual participants was erased following the Danish law.
Citation
Egilstrød, B. and Petersen, K.S. (2022), "Female spouses lived experiences of living with a husband with dementia: a qualitative study on changes in everyday life", Working with Older People, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 77-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/WWOP-09-2021-0048
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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