Browsing by Author "Tapp, Dianne"

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    Becoming a birth mother of a child with fetal alcohol syndrome
    (2008) Badry, Dorothy Eleanor; Hughson, E. Anne; Tapp, Dianne
    The term and the meanings associated with 'Fetal Alcohol Syndrome' (FAS) originates from, and to a large extent has become institutionally colonized by, a positivistic-science dominated bio-medical model. This dissertation houses a qualitative inquiry into the lived experience effects and affects of what it means to become and be a birth mother of a child diagnosed with FAS. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, in contemporary Western society, has become overtly represented as a moralized disability. As such, the dissertation locates - historically, culturally, socially, politically, and medically - the evolution of a prevailing discourse, grounded in the bio-medical definition of FAS, that suggests if only women refrain, by choice, from alcohol use during pregnancy, then FAS will cease to exist. Discourse on prevention suggests if pregnant women do not refrain from alcohol, then these mothers-to-be must be held responsible - ethically, socially, morally, medically, politically, etc. - for any alcohol-related difficulties the child experiences. Although there are 'takes' and 'solutions' on what to do about FAS in medical or political or cultural environments, there are very few studies that offer any in-depth insights or understandings of the lives of birth mothers who, indeed, give birth to a child diagnosed with FAS. Therefore, the purpose of the research advanced in this dissertation is to develop deeper understandings of the lived experiences of birth mothers of children diagnosed with FAS. To accomplish this inquiry, a hermeneutic phenomenology methodology was employed to provide a thick descriptive and significantly interpretive frame by which birth mothers with children diagnosed with FAS could be engaged with in meaningful, non-threatening conversations about their life experiences. This novel approach resulted in conversational - interview data, hermeneutically cared for, showing the lives of eight (8) women between the ages of twenty-five (25) and sixty (60) all of whom had given birth to one or more children medically diagnosed with FAS. Thus, this study sought to honour the often unheard voices its participant women whose lives were significantly fraught with poverty, trauma, abuse, violence, and alcoholism.
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    Biology of cognition and biology of love
    (2000) Tapp, Dianne; Wright, Lorraine M.; Bell, Janice M.
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    Inpatient Pediatric Oncology Nursing Adolescent Relational Care: It is Different, the Difference, and Making a Difference
    (2017) Toner, Nicole; Moules, Nancy; Tapp, Dianne; Wulff, Daniel
    Adolescents diagnosed with cancer confront a unique set of psychosocial challenges related to their particular developmental stage. Adolescents have high rates of psychosocial distress at diagnosis and their distress rates remain high well into survivorship. A nurse’s knowledge and sensitivity to the unique intersection between adolescent development and having cancer is foundational to effective psychosocial care. Responsive relationships between adolescents and nurses may well ease the distress of being hospitalized for cancer treatment and mitigate the various unique psychosocial sequela that cancer has on the adolescent developing self. Very little research has been done to understand the experience and meaning of the relationships developed between inpatient pediatric oncology nurses and their adolescent cancer patients. My purpose in this philosophical hermeneutic inquiry was to better understand the experience of relationship between adolescents with cancer and pediatric oncology nurses on pediatric oncology inpatient units, from both nurse and patient perspectives. Eight participants who have or had cancer during adolescence (14-18 years of age) and four pediatric oncology nurses were interviewed with an intent to expand the meaning of this relationship as it applies to practice. These data were then analyzed according to hermeneutic tradition as guided by the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Findings from this research revealed that adolescent needs are distinctive and important just because of their difference. Friendship-like adolescent-pediatric oncology nurse relationships on inpatient units are pivotal to a positive and developmentally constructive hospital experience. Developmentally appropriate relational nursing care includes: humor, social connection, “real speak,” being “rounded up” or treated older than chronological age, and friendship. The findings support the idea that friend-like relationships developed between nurses and adolescents are developmentally beneficial to the developing self and facilitate the integration of an adolescents pre-and-post cancer identity. Developmentally appropriate relational care of adolescents hospitalized for cancer on pediatric oncology units, I conclude, should be thought of as a psychosocial intervention in and of itself. Nurse-adolescent relationships are key to positive adolescent development in pediatric oncology inpatient care. The findings of this study underscore the need for future research that further understands the ways in which the inpatient pediatric oncology nurse-adolescent relationship may be therapeutic and the ways in which it is not.
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    The Role of Physical Activity in Supporting Health and Wellbeing in Family Caregivers to Cancer Patients
    (2017) Cuthbert, Colleen, Ann; Tapp, Dianne; Culos-Reed, S. Nicole; King-Shier, Kathryn; Ruether, Dean
    Cancer is a disease that impacts not only the patient, but also the family. Family members often take on the caregiving role and provide much needed emotional support, instrumental support, help with medical decision making, and physical care when their loved one has cancer. The care that is provided by family members is also an important resource to the cancer care system, when most treatments are delivered in an outpatient setting. While benefitting the cancer care system and providing much needed support to their family member, family caregiving may be detrimental to caregivers’ own physical and psychological health. Research over the last 30 years has documented the many negative impacts of caregiving and has highlighted the need for more studies focused on improving caregivers self-care and physical health. The purpose of this doctoral research was to examine the role of physical activity in supporting health and wellbeing in family caregivers to adult cancer patients. A systematic review was first conducted to synthesize and critically evaluate the evidence for physical activity interventions in family caregivers. Next, a cross sectional survey was conducted to evaluate physical and psychological health, and to assess current levels of, as well as barriers and motivations to physical activity, in men and women caregivers. A randomized controlled trial was then designed and implemented and mixed methods where used to evaluate outcomes on physical health, psychological health, and physical fitness. Findings from this research demonstrate there is a role for physical activity in supporting caregiver health and wellbeing. The results from our randomized controlled trial demonstrated improvements to mental well-being, physical activity levels, and physical fitness. Given some of the caregivers in our survey, and the majority in the randomized control trial, had high levels of depression, anxiety, and poor mental health quality of life, improvements to mental wellbeing through physical activity adds important new evidence about mechanisms to support caregivers. Ongoing work to further examine mechanisms to support caregiver health and wellbeing, and how to effectively deliver sustainable programs, is imperative as caregivers will continue to be relied upon by patients and the cancer care system into the future.
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    Understanding the mother child relationship through the lens of dementia
    (2004) Pearson, Sandra E.; Tapp, Dianne
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