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Doing Waiting Work: Older Adults' Lived Experience of Waiting for Community Occupational Therapy

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Thesis(5.53 MB)

Date

2023

Authors

Fryer, Vicki

Supervisor

Bright, Felicity
Conaglen, Jo
Jones, Margaret

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Degree name

Doctor of Health Science

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

This research occurred in response to the inability of a community occupational therapy service to meet the needs of community-dwelling older adults. High service demand for community occupational therapy has resulted in long-standing and lengthy waitlists. Services are not readily accessible in a timely manner. Older people, who make up an increasing proportion of the population, are referred to the community occupational therapy service to support their participation in daily occupations at home and in the community. However, rather than being provided with a service, many of these older people are placed onto a waitlist, where they wait for extended periods. It is not known how these people experience ‘waiting’. The aim of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the meaning of ‘waiting for community occupational therapy’ as experienced by community-dwelling older adults residing in Northland, New Zealand. Twelve older adults, eight men and four women, aged 68 – 88 years, who had waited three months or longer for community occupational therapy, were interviewed in their homes. The text (data) was comprised of participant stories, which were constructed from the transcribed interviews. These stories were interpreted using the philosophical notions of Heidegger and Gadamer, and van Manen’s lifeworld existentials, whilst employing an iterative process of writing and re-writing. Three phenomenological themes illuminated the findings of this study. These interpretive findings describe the experience of: ‘the uneasiness of waiting’, which reveals the participants’ struggle and uncertainty of being seen by the occupational therapist; ‘waiting as being with’, which shows how waiting occurs with and alongside others; and, ‘the not at-homeness of waiting’, which discloses how the participants were residing at home devoid of the comfort of being at-home in their home. Interwoven through the findings was the way occupations shaped, and were shaped by, waiting. Also revealed was the effect of physical, mental and emotional effort experienced and invested, as these older people determinedly carried on at home whilst waiting for community occupational therapy. This effort was a mode of work, which I term ‘waiting work’. As the participants did waiting work, there was a diminishing doing and being. Waiting for community occupational therapy is the insidious depletion of the older person’s meaningful life. Understanding the lived experience of waiting for community occupational therapy illuminates that the impact of waiting cannot be ignored or underestimated.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/16548

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