Exploring the experiences of nurses to understand what constitutes early recognition of sepsis: a phenomenographic study

Nemeckova, Marika (2022) Exploring the experiences of nurses to understand what constitutes early recognition of sepsis: a phenomenographic study. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Sepsis is a common but often unrecognised life-threatening condition, associated with a high rate of mortality. Health officials have emphasised that developing nursingexpertise is critical to improving early recognition of sepsis. However, early recognition of sepsis is commonly challenging due to its complexity in a clinical context. Therefore, an improved insight into the educational needs on this topic from the experiential perspectives of nurses is needed. Phenomenography was used in this study to explore various nurses' experiential perspectives of early recognition of sepsis. A phenomenographic approach is based on the assumption that differences in the way of experiencing a phenomenon are related to differences of the meanings people ascribe to the phenomenon in a particular context. On the basis of commonalities and differences in meanings, the collective experiences of a phenomenon can be arranged into a structure of experiences. Exploration of variation in experience allows for understanding of the dynamics of variation in the experience of a phenomenon at a collective level. The present study explores variation in the experience of early recognition of sepsis by examining the experiences of twenty-six nurses working in various settings at two hospitals.

Findings revealed four different understandings representative of variation in the experience of early recognition of sepsis: protocol-based care, disease-specific care and emergent care and emergency care. According to research participants, variations in the experience of contexts, in the experience of process and in the experience of learning influence the meanings nurses assign to early recognition of sepsis. Variation in the experience of early recognition of sepsis revealed in this research has significant implications for the design of curricula and teaching methods related to recognition of sepsis and for educators facilitating early recognition of sepsis courses.

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