Researchers used a hermeneutic phenomenological design to examine the lived experiences of women at different stages of breast cancer. Participants were 40 to 59 years old, with a mean age of 49.27 years and a standard deviation of 6.72. The sample included women at stages spanning surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy and survivorship. Data were collected through semi-structured bedside interviews lasting 20 to 55 minutes.

The analysis followed the method attributed to Diekelmann and colleagues, while the authors said they ensured rigor using the criteria of Lincoln and Guba. Sampling was purposive and used maximum variation, with data collection continuing until saturation. Within the first theme, engulfment in suffering, the abstract reports disquietude following the cancer diagnosis, an uncertain future and an avalanche of calamity. The second theme, metastasis into life, comprised an end to dynamism and fragmentation of relationships. The third theme, transitioning through uncertainty and doubt, included regaining self through reclaiming life, adaptation and clinging to a rope of hope.

The study reports qualitative observations rather than measured effects or clinical outcomes. Its scope was limited to 11 women in Iran, and the abstract does not establish whether the themes represent the experiences of breast cancer patients in other countries, larger populations or all treatment stages. The authors state that understanding the transition from health to illness may help healthcare professionals recognize patients’ needs and provide more comprehensive and compassionate care throughout the disease trajectory. This is a potential application of the findings, not evidence that a specific care intervention has been tested or shown to improve outcomes.

Subject of Research: Qualitative study of Iranian women’s experiences transitioning from health to illness with breast cancer

Article Title: The transition experience of breast cancer patients from health to illness in iran: from engulfment in suffering to passing through uncertainty and doubt – a hermeneutic phenomenological study

Article References: Mardanian Dehkordi, L., Hadian Jazi, Z., Hashemi, N., & Khoshkesht, S. (2026). The transition experience of breast cancer patients from health to illness in iran: from engulfment in suffering to passing through uncertainty and doubt – a hermeneutic phenomenological study. BMC Cancer. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-026-16943-x

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DOI: 10.1186/s12885-026-16943-x

Keywords: breast cancer, Iran, qualitative research, phenomenology, patient experience, uncertainty, psychological distress, adaptation, social relationships, survivorship, transition, experience

Vater recounts arriving for a Saturday fellowship round after an overnight stretch of answering calls. In a windowless team room, she reviewed reports, vital signs, laboratory results and orders, describing the patients behind the electronic records as feeling like “a distant echo.” The account centers on Lucy, a patient admitted for multiple myeloma treatment and preparing for transplant, whose blood counts were improving.

When Vater asked Lucy how she spent her time, Lucy answered, “In my garden.” The response led Vater to notice the hostas in Lucy’s room and to reflect on the wide-leafed shade plants that had lined the perimeter of her father’s garden. Lucy had cultivated numerous varieties, including plants with evergreen centers and celery-yellow edges, crimson stalks and tall lavender blooms expected later in the season.

The exchange also prompted Vater to describe her own family history with gardening. She recalled planting tomatoes, green beans and peppers with her father during summers in northern Minnesota, picking raspberries transplanted from his childhood home and boiling them into jam. A later visit showed a larger garden with a greenhouse, a caged blueberry patch near the woodpile and more space for growing produce.

Lucy asked what Vater enjoyed beyond her work. Instead of deflecting, Vater talked about writing a book, observing spring shrubs and changing skies, and expanding a small raised-bed garden. Lucy replied, “I have no doubt you’ll do it. One story at a time, one plant at a time.” Vater later added a sentence about hostas to Lucy’s progress note and concluded that the time spent talking with patients had more texture and color than the two-dimensional aspects of her paperwork.

During Lucy’s hospitalization, Vater said she looked forward to their conversations. At discharge, Lucy was already planning to add more hostas to her yard. A month later, when Vater visited her parents, she walked along an area where hostas covered the ground, noticing differences in leaf size and shape that she had not previously appreciated. She hoped Lucy would be well enough to enjoy her garden.

Vater began asking more patients about their hobbies and found that each person had interests beyond illness and treatment. The essay offers examples including making art from bottle caps, taking part in historical reenactments, painting landscapes, decorating homes with holiday villages, searching for gemstones, visiting decommissioned Navy ships, repairing sailboats and reading the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe. These examples remain the author’s observations; the essay does not quantify how often such conversations occurred or evaluate their effects.

The narrative also acknowledges that knowing patients as people does not remove the urgency, long hours or grief associated with medical practice. In some cases, Vater wrote, greater knowledge intensified the loss when a patient died. Nevertheless, she said that learning about patients’ lives grounded her and helped sustain her capacity to continue caring for them. She compared medicine with gardening: tending gently, listening closely and noticing what might otherwise be overlooked.

Because this is a first-person essay rather than a research report, its scope is limited to the author’s experience and the patients she discusses. It provides no protocol, intervention, control condition, statistical analysis, follow-up period or evidence that asking about hobbies changes clinical outcomes. Its reported value is reflective: the author describes how personal questions helped her see hospitalized people as individuals rather than only through diagnoses and data, closing with a memory of gathering the season’s last raspberries with her father and tasting their sweet, tangy flesh.

Subject of Research: A physician’s narrative essay on personal conversations and human connection during hospital care

Article Title: Hostas

Article References: Vater, L. B. (2026). Hostas. Journal of General Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-026-10230-y

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DOI: 10.1007/s11606-026-10230-y

Keywords: personal narrative essay, patient experience, humanistic medicine, hospital care, clinical relationships, gardening narrative, physician reflections, patient identity, Hostas, scientific research

Researchers analysed interviews conducted between May and October 2024 as part of the Family-oriented Rehabilitation for Adults with Mental Disorders project. Participants were patients with children who were receiving regular psychosomatic rehabilitation but were not receiving the family-oriented programme being developed. The original interview guide focused on family life, expectations and concerns; work and work-family compatibility emerged repeatedly without being the study’s initial focus. The researchers used a mixed deductive and inductive category-development approach for the first research question and a separate typifying content analysis of case summaries for the second.

The sample comprised 20 women and 12 men aged 26 to 57. All had between one and four children living in their household, with children ranging from infancy to 25 years. Thirty participants were employed at least part-time, including 13 who were on sick leave and one on parental leave. Self-reported reasons for rehabilitation included depression, burnout, exhaustion and anxiety disorders. Interviews averaged 60 minutes and were transcribed, reviewed, edited and anonymised before analysis. All interview material was in German, with selected passages translated for publication.

The analysis initially used established categories of work-family conflict based on time, strain and behaviour. Some accounts fit those categories, including family caregiving pressures that impaired work performance and work demands such as overtime or shift work that disrupted family life. However, the researchers found that this framework did not fully capture the recurring configurations described by participants. They therefore developed an alternative organization of the material in which time-, strain- and behaviour-related aspects remained embedded within eight empirically derived intrapersonal manifestations.

The eight manifestations were External Control, Excessive Performance Demands, Self-Sacrifice, Uncontrolled Boundary Blurring, Moral Conflicts, Invisible Loneliness, Existential Anxiety and Threat to Self-Identity. These categories described recurrent patterns in participants’ thoughts, emotions and behaviours. They were not mutually exclusive and could co-occur, interact or reinforce one another. Participants commonly described the conflict as a persistent internal tension rather than an isolated episode, with some reporting that it continued even after an external source of stress had been removed.

Separate case summaries captured how each participant understood the relationship among work-related stress, family-related stress and mental disorder. The resulting 13 scenarios represented different relational configurations rather than 13 individual cases. Some participants described mental disorder as a consequence of sustained work or family strain, while others treated it as the starting point that affected both domains. Other accounts described accumulation, cascading effects or simultaneous interactions without assigning a clear causal direction. In several cases, a critical life event disrupted an earlier balance between work and family.

Participants’ choice of language varied with the narrative position they described. Those who primarily attributed their condition to external pressures more often used terms such as burnout, exhaustion or overload, whereas participants who described mental disorder as the origin of their difficulties more often used clinical labels such as depression or anxiety disorder. A preliminary pattern linked external attributions with external control, excessive performance demands, self-sacrifice and uncontrolled boundary blurring, and internal attributions with moral conflicts, invisible loneliness, existential anxiety and threat to self-identity. The authors cautioned that the sample was too small to establish whether these relationships occur systematically in larger populations.

Several manifestations resembled features of depression or burnout, but participants often treated work-family conflict as a separate, legitimate burden rooted in everyday role demands. The findings therefore do not establish that the manifestations are diagnostically distinct in every case. The analysis could not determine whether depression initiated, sustained or amplified work-family conflict. The scenarios also reconstruct participants’ temporal and causal attributions rather than demonstrating objective causal relationships, and the study did not measure treatment response, symptom reduction, return to work or quality of life.

Several limitations restrict the findings’ scope. The work-family theme was analysed secondarily from interviews designed primarily to explore family-related rehabilitation needs. The sample came from one German clinic and consisted specifically of parents recruited for a family-oriented project, so people with pronounced conflict may have been more likely to participate. It remains uncertain whether the findings apply to patients without children or to the broader German rehabilitation population. The exploratory category and scenario systems are also not exhaustive, and a larger sample could identify additional patterns.

The authors proposed that explicitly examining work-family conflict could complement clinical case formulation by making patients’ descriptions of persistent strain more visible. They also suggested that future longitudinal research should test how conflict relates to rehabilitation outcomes, including symptom reduction, return to work and quality of life. Those implications remain proposals: the present qualitative study did not test an intervention or demonstrate improved outcomes from addressing work-family conflict in rehabilitation.

Subject of Research: Qualitative study of work-family conflict among parents in German psychosomatic rehabilitation

Article Title: “Because you just get stuck in this hamster wheel” – experience and narratives of work-family conflicts among patients in psychosomatic rehabilitation

Article References: Bindels, H., Miluczenko, H., Bethge, M., & Schuler, M. (2026). “Because you just get stuck in this hamster wheel” – experience and narratives of work-family conflicts among patients in psychosomatic rehabilitation. BMC Psychology, 14(1), Article 1362. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05615-x

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DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05615-x

Keywords: work-family conflict, psychosomatic rehabilitation, mental disorders, parenting, qualitative interviews, narrative analysis, Germany, patient experience, caregiving, Because, just, stuck

Researchers recruited participants through purposive sampling from a predominantly medically underserved urban healthcare system between June and October 2024. They conducted semi-structured interviews with perinatal patients and clinicians, then analyzed the interviews using Braun and Clark’s six-step approach to reflexive thematic analysis. A crosswalk analytic structure was used to compare patient and clinician themes, with representative excerpts assessed for the degree of convergence between perspectives. All patient participants identified as Black or African American and were Medicaid recipients. The clinicians included 12 certified nurse-midwives, eight obstetrician-gynecologists, two advanced practice registered nurses and one family physician.

Strong convergence emerged around the effects of discrimination, trauma sequelae, social support, communication and structural resource gaps. Both groups described safety as foundational to trauma-informed care, emphasized avoiding retraumatization and supported implementation across the perinatal continuum. The comparison also showed a partial convergence around implementation: trauma-informed care was often described as aspirational rather than consistently embedded in routine practice, leaving a visible gap between clinician intent and patient experience. These findings do not establish that interpersonal behavior alone is insufficient to deliver trauma-informed care, nor do they test the effectiveness of any intervention. They instead show that the accounts gathered in this study identified a divide between articulated principles and what patients experienced in practice.

The authors characterize trauma-informed care as structurally contingent, meaning that experiences of safety, trust, accessibility and empowerment are shaped by intersecting social and structural determinants of health. The expanded Race and Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Care, or RECTIC, framework extends analysis beyond individual clinical encounters to emphasize organizational, community and policy-level investment in structural equity, trust and the conditions needed for equitable maternal and infant health care. The study offers a qualitative account of barriers reported by a defined group in one healthcare system, rather than a population estimate or outcome trial. Its purposive sample and setting limit broad generalization, and the crosswalk analysis identifies aligned themes and implementation gaps without determining which differences are most common across perinatal populations. The central reported concern is therefore not merely whether clinicians and patients share the same ideals, but whether the surrounding system consistently turns those ideals into accessible, trustworthy and empowering care.

Subject of Research: Qualitative comparison of patient and clinician experiences with structural and social barriers in perinatal care

Article Title: An expanded Race and Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Care (RECTIC) framework: crosswalk analysis of patient and clinician perspectives on structural and social barriers in perinatal care

Article References: Goldstein, E., & Itani, M. S. (2026). An expanded Race and Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Care (RECTIC) framework: crosswalk analysis of patient and clinician perspectives on structural and social barriers in perinatal care. International Journal for Equity in Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-026-03060-1

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DOI: 10.1186/s12939-026-03060-1

Keywords: perinatal care, trauma-informed care, racial equity, maternal health, patient experience, clinician perspectives, social determinants of health, Medicaid, qualitative research, health disparities, expanded, Race

Researchers used an interpretative phenomenological design to examine how nine adults described the changes they believed were necessary after a myocardial infarction. Participants were recruited through post-infarction follow-up at two urban primary healthcare centres in Spain. Four identified as women and five as men; none identified as non-binary. Their ages ranged from 44 to 78 years. Although both centres served neighbourhoods with relatively high socioeconomic indicators, the final group also included people with limited economic resources. Interviews were conducted between March 2022 and December 2023, usually at participants’ homes or in private rooms, and lasted approximately one hour. The researchers audio-recorded and transcribed the interviews verbatim before applying deductive and inductive thematic analysis in ATLAS.ti.

Recruitment continued until the investigators judged that no new themes or insights were emerging. They considered nine participants sufficient for the study’s specific objectives and relatively homogeneous group, a sample size described as consistent with thematic saturation in focused qualitative research. Two researchers conducted the interviews, while the wider team refined the coding through comparison and consensus discussions. Credibility was supported through participant validation and reflective dialogue, and transferability through purposive sampling with maximum variation and detailed descriptions of the setting. The design explored lived experience rather than clinical endpoints, so it did not measure whether any intervention improved survival, symptoms or cardiovascular risk.

The analysis produced three themes: mobilizing personal and behavioural resources, engaging with emotions, and experiencing follow-up from the healthcare team. Participants commonly reflected on habits preceding the infarction, including diet, alcohol consumption, smoking, stress and work. Several treated the event as a turning point that required new priorities, healthier routines and a degree of self-protection. Walking was the most frequently described form of physical activity, and smoking cessation appeared among the more persistent changes. Yet participants also described returning to familiar routines over time. Their accounts therefore showed that initial motivation did not automatically translate into sustained adherence, particularly when recommended activities competed with fatigue, work, caregiving or limited mobility.

Women in this sample described more difficulties maintaining physical activity than men. Post-infarction tiredness was a recurrent concern: one woman said she became breathless after tasks that had once been manageable, while an older participant reported greater difficulty climbing stairs. Preexisting illnesses, including joint problems, also restricted movement for some participants. One 61-year-old woman distinguished between incidental walking and a deliberate exercise routine, attributing her limitations to a knee problem. By contrast, men more often described walking as something they could fit into an existing daily structure, and one man said that having more time during sick leave allowed him to walk more. These observations describe patterns within the sample; they do not establish that women generally exercise less after myocardial infarction.

Employment was another major source of contrast. Men in the study generally described returning to work without substantial adjustment. Women reported job loss, insecure conditions and concern that prospective employers would view them as unreliable because of their cardiac history. One woman said, “They sacked me and now I cope as best I can.” Another explained that employers did not see her as being “100%” and expected that she might take more sick leave, which she said made new employment difficult. The study’s analysis linked these experiences to gendered economic and employment circumstances rather than treating job loss as a direct physiological effect of the infarction. Whether the same patterns occur in larger or more diverse populations remains unknown.

Household responsibilities also changed only temporarily for several participants. Partners and children initially helped women with cooking and domestic work, encouraged them to rest and allowed them to resume activities gradually. One participant described how the routine quickly returned to normal. Men reported little change in their household roles, with spouses continuing to carry most domestic tasks. Within this sample, therefore, recovery unfolded around established expectations about paid work, caregiving and the distribution of household labor. The authors interpret this as evidence that pre-existing social roles can reassert themselves after discharge, but they caution that the findings should not be generalized automatically to every woman or man. Gender was examined as a framework for social roles, expectations and power relations, not as a replacement for individual assessment.

Recovery also involved conflicting emotions. Participants expressed guilt about what they regarded as poor choices before the infarction, including smoking, diet or insufficient attention to their health. A 44-year-old woman said she wondered whether behaving differently might have prevented her condition. Fear of another event or sudden death was widespread. One 51-year-old man described the death of a friend during a padel match and the resulting question of whether the same might happen to him. A 58-year-old woman recalled being afraid to fall asleep because she might not wake again. Relatives sometimes shared this vigilance. These accounts identify fear, guilt and vulnerability as part of participants’ recovery experience, but the small qualitative sample did not quantify their prevalence or establish effects on clinical outcomes.

Participants were generally positive about emergency care but described post-discharge information and follow-up as sparse, vague or inconsistent. Advice about diet, smoking and exercise was sometimes basic, and one participant said she had received no recommendations before leaving hospital. Instructions concerning driving and returning to work were not always explained, leaving some participants uncertain. Many expected early contact with a cardiologist but instead encountered delays, an unclear plan or primary-care follow-up focused on other chronic conditions. One man said, “I even don’t know who the cardiologist is.” Most participants had not taken part in a cardiac rehabilitation programme, and the investigators suggested that limited availability in the study area may have contributed. Sexual changes, including reduced libido among some men, were rarely discussed with clinicians despite medication and age potentially being considered by participants.

Based on these experiences, the authors proposed a broader nursing assessment after myocardial infarction. They recommended evaluating functional capacity, fatigue, comorbidities, emotional wellbeing, household and caregiving duties, employment conditions, family support and the practical feasibility of lifestyle recommendations, rather than assuming needs from sex or gender categories. They also described potential roles for individualized goals, motivational interviewing, medication and symptom education, brief emotional support, scheduled follow-up and coordination among hospital care, primary care and cardiac rehabilitation. With a patient’s agreement, relatives could participate in education and goal setting, although the study participants said little about how families actively shaped healthy habits. The authors further proposed that mobile applications and connected devices might complement these services where structured rehabilitation is limited, while stressing affordability, accessibility, digital literacy and equity. The study did not test a digital intervention or the effectiveness of any nursing approach, so these remain proposed implications rather than demonstrated benefits.

Subject of Research: Gendered experiences of lifestyle change, employment, emotional responses and healthcare follow-up during recovery after acute myocardial infarction.

Article Title: Users' Experiences During Cardiac Recovery Following Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Qualitative Study With a Gender Perspective

Article References: Santos‐Ruiz, S., Jerez‐Molina, C., Rodriguez‐Romero, R., Zamora‐Sánchez, J. J., & González‐De Paz, L. (2026). Users' Experiences During Cardiac Recovery Following Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Qualitative Study With a Gender Perspective. Nursing Open, 13(10), Article e70886. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.70886

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DOI: 10.1002/nop2.70886

Keywords: myocardial infarction, cardiac recovery, gender roles, qualitative study, cardiac rehabilitation, self-care, employment, patient experience, nursing care, healthcare follow-up, Users', Experiences

Researchers conducted the study with a phenomenological design to examine how individuals living with cancer understood the biopsychosocial dimensions of their experience and the meanings they attributed to spirituality and spiritual coping. The participants were recruited from a public hospital through criterion sampling, described in the study as a purposive sampling strategy. Data were gathered through individual, face-to-face, semi-structured in-depth interviews.

The researchers used Colaizzi’s seven-step phenomenological analysis method, and the sample size was determined through data saturation. Analysis produced three main themes: perceptions of cancer and reactions to the illness process, biopsychosocial effects of the disease, and coping with cancer and spiritual resilience. Nine subthemes further organized participants’ accounts: initial perception of cancer, changing perception over time, starting treatment, recurrence experience, physical effects, psychological effects, social effects, spiritual coping methods, and perception of coping.

Within this account, spiritual coping emerged as one way some participants responded to living with cancer. Their accounts associated spirituality with meaning-making, hope and endurance, but the study did not present it as a uniform experience shared by all 13 participants. Because the investigation was qualitative and centered on interviews with 13 patients, it describes the experiences reported within this sample rather than measuring how common spiritual coping is or establishing effects on clinical outcomes.

The authors concluded that the changing biopsychosocial needs and personal coping resources of people living with cancer point toward an individualized and holistic approach to supporting them.

Subject of Research: Qualitative study of biopsychosocial cancer experiences and spiritual coping among 13 patients

Article Title: Biopsychosocial dimensions of cancer and spiritual coping strategies: a phenomenological study of patient experiences

Article References: Aydın, E., Uzun, S., Karakaş, S., Günay, D., & Büyükçerçi, N. N. (2026). Biopsychosocial dimensions of cancer and spiritual coping strategies: a phenomenological study of patient experiences. Supportive Care in Cancer, 34(11), Article 1126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-026-11391-6

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DOI: 10.1007/s00520-026-11391-6

Keywords: cancer, spiritual coping, patient experience, phenomenology, qualitative research, biopsychosocial effects, hope, meaning-making, supportive care, Biopsychosocial, dimensions, spiritual

The study, conducted from June 2023 through January 2026, used purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews with 17 pregnant Asian and Hispanic women without prior diabetes and 10 obstetric providers. Participants had experienced either the one-step oral glucose tolerance test or the two-step approach used in the United States. The interviews examined experiences with screening, perceptions of the different testing modalities and barriers to implementing the one-step method. Researchers transcribed the interviews and analyzed them through thematic analysis with inductive coding, producing two overarching themes from the relatively small qualitative sample.

Although the one-step test is more sensitive and is recommended by several international organizations, the two-step procedure remains the standard in the United States. Concerns that the one-step test would impose an excessive fasting burden, create undue anxiety or require too much time have limited its adoption, particularly in populations described as being at higher risk, including Asian and Hispanic women. The findings suggest that some of those concerns may be overstated at the patient level: most women in the study said fasting was manageable, accepted the time commitment and regarded the possible diagnosis as worthwhile because it could support efforts to protect maternal and infant health.

Providers nevertheless described their own reasons for continuing to use the two-step approach. Their choices were driven primarily by institutional norms, established protocols, training and system constraints, as well as a reluctance to deviate from standard practice. This pattern indicates that improving early detection through a more sensitive screening approach may depend less on persuading patients to accept one-step testing than on changing the clinical systems in which tests are ordered and delivered. The authors identify updated guidelines and infrastructure as necessary system-level changes, with particular relevance for groups in which earlier recognition of gestational diabetes could improve opportunities to reduce longer-term metabolic risk.

The research does not establish that one-step screening improves clinical outcomes, nor does it quantify how many patients would change their preferences or how widely the results apply. As a qualitative evaluation based on 27 participants at a single affiliated clinic network, it is intended to illuminate experiences and decision-making rather than test screening performance or compare rates of gestational diabetes diagnosis. Its strongest supported conclusion is that institutional inertia appeared central to the continuing use of two-step testing in the studied setting, while anticipated patient resistance proved less substantial than providers expected.

Subject of Research: Provider decisions and patient experiences with one-step and two-step gestational diabetes screening

Article Title: A qualitative evaluation of provider decision-making and patient experiences with 1-step and 2-step gestational diabetes (GDM) screening

Article References: Gogineni, S., Sirna, S., Chitnavis, S., Lin, V., Desai, S., Sajjad, R., Dayal, A., S Mathad, J., Sundararajan, R., & Chebrolu, P. (2026). A qualitative evaluation of provider decision-making and patient experiences with 1-step and 2-step gestational diabetes (GDM) screening. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29819-3

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DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29819-3

Keywords: gestational diabetes, pregnancy screening, oral glucose tolerance test, clinical guidelines, healthcare systems, patient experience, provider decision-making, early diagnosis, ethnic health disparities, qualitative research, qualitative, evaluation

The research combined one focus group, 13 individual semi-structured interviews and five dyadic interviews, the latter involving a patient and a partner. Data collection and analysis were conducted iteratively, and the researchers used reflexive thematic analysis following the methods of Braun and Clarke. The design was exploratory and qualitative, so it identifies experiences and perceived care needs rather than measuring the effectiveness of a palliative-care intervention.

Two central themes emerged: “See me as a person” and “Guide me through the trajectory.” The first captured patients’ desire to be recognized as individuals, with empathy, open communication and holistic care. The second reflected the need expressed by both patients and partners for clear guidance and support across the medical journey, including emotional, practical and logistical dimensions.

Patients emphasized that being acknowledged as a person beyond their disease mattered within palliative care. Their accounts indicated that care should attend to their experiences and needs in addition to the illness itself. Open communication and holistic care were central to this sense of recognition, while standardized approaches appeared insufficiently responsive to differences among patients.

Partners described their own needs within the study. They wanted to be valued and to receive information that enabled them to provide care and maintain a sense of control and security. This places the experiences of informal caregivers alongside those of patients rather than treating support as relevant only to the person diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. It also shows how the demands placed on partners can extend beyond practical caregiving to include recognition, information and support.

Across the interviews, participants identified gaps in care that the researchers linked to a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Patients reported a need for acknowledgment and support in anticipating future requirements, while partners emphasized the value of information and guidance. The findings therefore point to palliative care as a process that should provide continuing support through different stages of the medical journey, from diagnosis to end-of-life care.

Pulmonary fibrosis is described in the research as a progressive disease associated with reduced life expectancy and quality of life. Palliative care aims to optimize quality of life for patients and their informal caregivers. The researchers noted that previous studies have shown unmet palliative-care needs among people with pulmonary fibrosis, while the present work explores how patients and partners experience those needs in detail.

The findings are based on the accounts of a relatively small group: 15 patients and 10 informal caregivers. As a qualitative study, it does not establish how common each experience is or test whether a particular service model would improve outcomes. Instead, it identifies priorities that may guide improvements in palliative care, including more individualized recognition, clearer communication and support for both patients and the partners who care for them.

Subject of Research: Patient and partner experiences of palliative care for pulmonary fibrosis

Article Title: Experiences of palliative care for patients with pulmonary fibrosis: A qualitative exploration of patients and partners perspectives

Article References: Trapman, L., Dijksman, L. M., Grutters, J. C., Teunissen, S. C. C. M., & de Graaf, E. (2026). Experiences of palliative care for patients with pulmonary fibrosis: A qualitative exploration of patients and partners perspectives. PLOS One, 21(10), e0360649. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360649

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DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0360649

Keywords: pulmonary fibrosis, palliative care, qualitative research, patient experience, informal caregivers, thematic analysis, care navigation, quality of life, Experiences, palliative, care, patients

The methodological approach behind the study deserves closer attention, because it illustrates how text mining has matured into a practical instrument for health services research. The researchers gathered reviews about several top-tier large general Grade-A tertiary hospitals from Dazhongdianping, a widely used domestic review platform whose public postings resemble a hybrid of consumer commentary and personal narrative. Rather than relying on a single analytical technique, the team combined the text-analysis software ROST CM 6.0 with custom Python programming to carry out a sequence of complementary procedures: data collection, high-frequency word analysis, semantic network analysis, sentiment analysis, and trend analysis. Each of these steps answers a different kind of question. High-frequency word analysis reveals which terms dominate the conversation, semantic network analysis shows how those terms relate to one another in patients’ mental maps of a hospital visit, sentiment analysis classifies the emotional valence of the reviews, and trend analysis tracks how attention and feeling shift over time.

The decision to layer these techniques matters because any one of them, used alone, can mislead. A word that appears frequently may do so in both praise and complaint, and a sentiment classifier applied without contextual grounding can mistake clinical terminology for emotional language. By triangulating across methods, the researchers could distinguish, for example, between the sheer prominence of a topic and the emotional charge attached to it. This is particularly important in the medical setting, where the same word such as an appointment system can anchor positive sentiment when it works smoothly and negative sentiment when it fails. The study’s design therefore reflects a broader trend in which computational text analysis is treated not as a single tool but as a toolkit whose components check and correct one another.

The headline finding, that patients paid the most attention to medical staff’s service attitude and to medical convenience, aligns with a substantial body of patient-experience research conducted through surveys, yet it carries a distinctive weight because it emerges from spontaneous, unprompted commentary. Survey respondents answer the questions they are asked; review writers choose their own topics. When thousands of people independently converge on attitude and convenience without being steered toward them, the signal is arguably stronger than what structured instruments capture. It suggests that these two dimensions function as the primary lenses through which patients interpret an entire hospital encounter, with judgments about medical service quality diverging around them rather than around clinical outcomes.

The emotional geography of the reviews is equally instructive. Positive sentiment clustered around appointments and facilities, meaning that patients felt good about the hospital when scheduling was manageable and the physical environment met their expectations. Negative sentiment, by contrast, concentrated on process order and doctor-patient communication. The asymmetry is telling: the things patients praise tend to be structural and impersonal, while the things that provoke frustration tend to involve sequence, fairness, and human interaction. A patient can forgive an aging waiting room more easily than a chaotic queue or a physician who explains nothing. Communication failures appear to be especially corrosive because they occur at the point of maximum vulnerability, when a patient is seeking not just treatment but understanding.

The roughly even split between positive and negative sentiment across the corpus is itself a finding worth pausing over. It indicates that online reviews of even elite hospitals are not dominated by either cheerleading or grievance, but instead form a genuinely mixed record. For hospital administrators, this cuts both ways. There is no large reservoir of goodwill that excuses systemic problems, and there is no pattern of relentless complaint that suggests the institutions are failing outright. The feedback stream is best read as a running balance sheet in which specific, fixable aspects of the experience determine which side of the ledger a given visit lands on.

The temporal patterns the authors identified add another dimension that cross-sectional surveys routinely miss. Patients’ concerns and sentiments were not static; they shifted over time, which implies that the drivers of patient experience evolve with changes in hospital operations, platform culture, and perhaps broader expectations about digital services. A hospital that surveys its patients once a year may be measuring a moving target. Continuous monitoring of review streams, as this study demonstrates, can reveal when a particular concern is rising before it hardens into a reputational problem, giving administrators a form of early warning that traditional feedback mechanisms cannot provide.

Perhaps the most consequential observation in the study is the low attention paid to technical factors. Reviews concentrated on non-technical elements such as attitude, process, and waiting time, while clinical skill, the very thing hospitals most pride themselves on, received comparatively little mention. The authors interpret this as evidence of the substantial impact non-technical factors have on the overall medical experience. There are several plausible readings of this pattern. One is that patients lack the expertise to evaluate technical quality directly and therefore use proxy signals, such as how respectfully they were treated, to infer it. Another is that technical competence is assumed at top-tier institutions, so it simply does not register as noteworthy, while lapses in courtesy or efficiency do. Either way, the practical implication is the same: a hospital’s reputation among the public is built largely in the waiting room and at the registration desk, not only in the operating theater.

The study’s institutional context is worth noting. All of the affiliated authors are based at Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an, spanning departments of medical insurance, information, and gastroenterology, and the work was supported by the hospital’s Booster Plan. This mix of administrative, technical, and clinical perspectives is fitting for a project that sits at the intersection of data science and patient care. The authors state that the study does not involve ethical issues and required no ethical approval, and they declare no competing interests. The data were publicly accessible, drawn from a platform whose postings users had already chosen to share openly, which places this kind of research in a comparatively uncomplicated ethical position relative to studies that collect private health information.

The publication timeline also reflects the current pace of health services research. The manuscript was received in December 2025, accepted in September 2026, and published on 23 September 2026 as an open access article under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Readers encountering the article now are seeing a version shared early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research; it is citable and carries a permanent DOI, but it remains subject to further edits before the final Version of Record replaces it automatically. For a study whose subject is the speed and transparency of patient feedback, there is a certain symmetry in a publication model designed to shorten the distance between acceptance and availability.

For health systems outside China, the findings travel with some caveats but also with considerable relevance. Review platforms, appointment systems, and hospital hierarchies differ across countries, yet the underlying psychology of the patient as a person navigating an unfamiliar, anxiety-inducing environment is close to universal. The study validates online review analysis as a feasible research approach for medical services, and its conclusion is directed squarely at top large medical institutions: improve service attitude, strengthen communication, streamline processes, and enhance the overall experience, all while continuing to focus on professional technology. In effect, the patients writing these reviews have delivered a consistent message that technical excellence is the price of entry, but the remembered quality of care is written in the tone of a conversation, the length of a wait, and the ease of finding one’s way through a complicated system. Hospitals that listen to this unfiltered stream of voices gain access to a continuous, candid audit of exactly those dimensions that patients weigh most heavily, and that no annual survey can fully replicate.

Subject of Research: Text mining of online patient reviews to identify what shapes patient experience and sentiment in large Chinese tertiary hospitals

Article Title: Decoding patients’ voices: how social media reviews reveal the true impact of medical service

Article References: Liu, X., Zhao, L., Liu, W., Hu, D., & Chen, M. (2026). Decoding patients’ voices: how social media reviews reveal the true impact of medical service. BMC Health Services Research. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-026-15674-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12913-026-15674-w

Keywords: patient experience, online reviews, social media, text mining, sentiment analysis, hospital care, health services research, service attitude, doctor-patient communication, tertiary hospitals, China, patient satisfaction

The study matters because comfort is one of the most cited yet least examined concepts in nursing science. Kolcaba’s comfort theory, a widely used framework in the field, treats comfort as a multidimensional state spanning physical ease, psychological peace, social belonging and environmental relief. But the theory’s building blocks were largely derived from Western patient populations, and the researchers suspected that the experience of discomfort and comfort among Chinese patients on maintenance hemodialysis might be shaped by cultural values and beliefs that standard assessment tools never capture. If clinicians cannot see comfort through their patients’ eyes, they cannot deliver the person-centred care that health systems around the world now claim as their goal.

To find out, the team turned to interpretative phenomenological analysis, or IPA, a qualitative method designed to uncover how individuals make sense of their lived experiences. Rather than measuring comfort with rating scales, IPA asks researchers to reconstruct the meaning patients attach to their own suffering and relief. The researchers recruited twenty-one adults receiving maintenance hemodialysis at a national public hospital in China and conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with each of them between January and May 2025. Interviews were transcribed and then analysed inductively and iteratively, following the six canonical steps of IPA, with the software NVivo 15 used to organize and code the growing dataset. Reporting followed the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research, the COREQ checklist that sets transparency standards for interview-based studies, and the project received ethics approval from Xiangya Hospital with written informed consent from every participant.

From those twenty-one narratives, three themes crystallized, and together they sketch an arc from endurance to hope. The first theme, which the authors call putting up with the burdens of disease and hemodialysis, describes discomfort as a layered, self-reinforcing condition. Physical symptoms such as fatigue, pain and the after-effects of dialysis sessions did not sit in isolation; they interacted with and aggravated one another. On top of the physical burden came what the researchers describe as overwhelming psychological crises, a compromised social support system in which relationships frayed under the weight of chronic illness, and a disturbing healthcare environment that patients experienced as a source of stress rather than solace.

That last finding is perhaps the study’s most striking technical result. Across all twenty-one interviews, not a single participant described the healthcare environment as a source of comfort. In comfort theory terms, environmental comfort, the relief that comes from pleasant surroundings, attentive staff and a sense of safety within the care setting, was effectively absent from these patients’ lives. For a hospital-based therapy that patients attend multiple times a week for years, the dialysis unit itself, the very place where treatment happens, registered only as a burden. The authors suggest this points to a systematic gap: the physical and interpersonal environment of dialysis units is rarely designed or evaluated with patient comfort as an explicit outcome.

The second theme, experiencing respite in life with hemodialysis, shifts the picture from suffering to relief. Patients described comfort in concrete, almost tactical terms. Early hemodialysis, meaning earlier initiation of treatment or earlier sessions that brought quicker relief from symptoms, was experienced as comfort because it shortened the window of suffering. Family support emerged as a second pillar, with relatives providing both practical help and emotional anchoring. And in a phrase that captures the social texture of Chinese dialysis wards, patients spoke of fellow patients huddling for warmth, the mutual solidarity that develops among people who share the same chairs, the same schedules and the same fears. Comfort, in other words, was not something patients generated alone; it was co-produced by timely treatment, family and community.

The third theme, seeking a decent life with hemodialysis, reveals what patients are reaching for beyond relief. Their articulated comfort needs fell into four categories: freedom from physical and psychological discomfort, the rebuilding of life meaning, a life-oriented healthcare environment, and access to disease-related information. The desire for information is easy to overlook but technically significant, because it reframes patient education not as an optional courtesy but as a comfort intervention in its own right. Patients who understand their disease and their treatment regimen experience a form of cognitive comfort, a reduction in the anxiety produced by uncertainty. Similarly, the demand for a life-oriented environment suggests that patients want dialysis units that acknowledge them as people with identities, routines and futures, not merely as bodies attached to machines.

Woven through all three themes is the influence of the Chinese sociocultural context, which the authors treat not as background noise but as an active variable. Cultural values around endurance, family obligation and face, the social standing that illness can threaten, may shape how patients interpret their discomfort and what they count as comfort. The phrase putting up with, a direct echo of the Chinese concept of forbearance, implies that many patients experience suffering as something to be borne rather than complained about, which has direct clinical consequences: patients who endure silently may underreport symptoms, delaying interventions. The researchers argue that comfort assessment and care planning must therefore be culturally adapted, not simply translated from instruments developed elsewhere.

The practical implications the authors propose are aimed squarely at nurses, who deliver the overwhelming majority of hands-on dialysis care. Because discomfort in this population is multidimensional, with physical symptoms, psychological crises, social isolation and environmental stressors interacting and aggravating one another, single-target interventions are unlikely to succeed. The study’s findings support comfort-focused nursing assessments that map all four dimensions of Kolcaba’s framework for each patient, systematic screening for psychological distress alongside symptom management, deliberate cultivation of peer support structures that formalize the huddling-for-warmth effect, environmental redesign of dialysis units to make them sources of comfort rather than stress, and structured, accessible patient education that satisfies the documented hunger for disease-related information.

What makes this study resonate beyond nephrology is its methodological honesty and its universal message. By listening rather than measuring, the researchers surfaced needs that standardized comfort questionnaires would likely have missed, including the rebuilding of life meaning and the desire for dignity and some control over daily life. The authors conclude that Chinese maintenance hemodialysis patients experience multidimensional discomfort as a burden of everyday life, find comfort through treatment and the support of others, and aspire to live with dignity, meaning and agency. In a world where aging populations and rising rates of diabetes and hypertension are steadily expanding the dialysis population, that conclusion reads less like a local finding and more like a warning for every health system: keeping patients alive is the floor of care, and the ceiling is a life that still feels worth living.

Subject of Research: Comfort experiences and needs of maintenance hemodialysis patients explored through interpretative phenomenological analysis to inform person-centred nursing care

Article Title: The comfort experiences and needs of maintenance hemodialysis patients: a qualitative study to inform person-centred health services

Article References: Huang, Y., Yan, F., Wang, J., Xiao, J., Wiley, J. A., Zhou, J., Adigawe, T., & Sun, M. (2026). The comfort experiences and needs of maintenance hemodialysis patients: a qualitative study to inform person-centred health services. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05536-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05536-5

Keywords: hemodialysis, comfort, discomfort, qualitative research, interpretative phenomenological analysis, person-centred care, nursing, Kolcaba's comfort theory, kidney disease, patient experience, China, quality of life