The patient's hospital experience: A grounded theory analysis of personal accounts

For many individuals being a patient in a hospital is a common place reality. What does it mean to be a patient? The purpose of the present study was to address this question through intensive inquiry and analysis of the experiences of eight patients, selected to represent varied medical conditions and chronicity. These individuals were asked to describe in their own words their experiences as a patient, including both positive and negative aspects. Open-ended interviews were used to gain the insider's perspective into what it is like to be a patient in the hospital. The grounded theory method, developed by Glaser and Strauss, was used by the researcher to compile and interpret the descriptions. Based on participants' accounts of their experiences, the investigator conceptualized various aspects of patients' experiences that contributed to feelings of self-alienation including, entering another reality (i.e., the hospital environment), personal frames (the perceptions and feelings individuals have regarding their admission), roulette (the various factors that influence patients' experiences including, differences among hospitals, nature of illness, variables associated with time of admission, and variations of medical professional competence and personality), lifeline (the equipment and people patients are dependent upon when in the hospital), patient personas (the social selves individuals adopt while in the hospital that may be similar or completely opposite to the ones they portray outside the hospital or to their true self), feeling like a prisoner with rights and privileges taken away, and feeling objectified. These were brought together to form a theory of the hospital patients experience, organized around the core category, Alienation from the Self, in the sense that when participants became patients they entered into a process of becoming alienated from their social, psychological, physical, and spiritual selves. The more exposure participants had to the hospital milieu, the more likely they felt alienated from themselves. The more individuals felt self-alienated, the more likely they were to perceive their hospital experience as negative. This new model of patients' hospital experience is discussed comparatively with previous findings, and implications are delineated in the context of the currently changing health-care system.