CRITICAL ANALYSIS

The experience of ambiguous loss in families of brain injured ICU patients

The experience of ambiguous loss in families of brain injured ICU patients

Does the title reflect the content?

The title of the article reads “The experience of ambiguous loss in families of brain injured ICU patients”. This clearly reflects that the article presents the data and experiences of such families that comprise of brain injured patients subjected to intensive care unit. The information encompassed in this article is derived from the family group interviews and well relates to the experience of those families with an ambiguous loss which followed the brain injury of their family members (Kean, 2010, pp. 66-73).

Are the authors credible?

The author of this article is Susanne Kean. Susanne acquired her nursing qualification in Marburg in the year 1983 and worked at the University Hospital Kiel, Germany, and the University Hospital Zürich, Switzerland, prior to switching to intensive care nursing. Susanne completed her graduation in Nursing and Health Studies with an MSc from the University of Edinburgh and operated being a research assistant prior to starting her PhD.

The PhD research of Susanne explored the experiences of such families having their members in intensive care and the perceptions of nurses regarding the families in such a milieu. Her educational career and then her extensive experience as in the field of nursing reflect Susanne's credibility. The research interests of Susanne are centred at the experiences of the families relating to the crucial ailments and then recovering from those ailments.

Does the abstract summarize the key components?

The abstract of this article is quite comprehensive and presents a synopsis of the entire content included in the article, counting in the relative background, the rationale for carrying out the research, the research methodology and study design employed, the means for collecting data and the way it is analyzed, the findings of the research and the inference derived from the study. In the abstract it is presented that the advancements in the technology of medicine have resulted in enhanced rates of survival for the patients that are critically ill, leading to the patients' survival having critical harrowing brain injuries. Such patients might go through some enduring brain damage resulting in an ambiguous loss for their families. There are two dimensions of ambiguous loss; a loss which brings up the family member's psychological dearth but the physical absence; and a loss which brings up the family member's physical dearth but the psychological presence. As the abstract reflects, the purpose of the study is to investigate the experiences of the families having crucial ailments subjected to intensive care and the perception of the nurses regarding those families.

This research includes the employment of the constructive ground theory which employs focus groups as the research method. The interviews which were conducted for this research were recorded, transliterate as it is and imported for the analysis and management of data into NVivo. The completeness of the abstract of this article is most reflected by looking at the ...