Journal article
Deservingness and gratitude in the context of heart transplantation
Qualitative Health Research, Vol.24(12), pp.1635-1647
2014
Abstract
Heart transplantation is now routinely offered as a treatment for end-stage heart failure, and the “gift-of-life” metaphor has become pervasive in this context, forming the foundation on which transplantation discourses rest. In this article, we question organ-as-gift understandings of transplantation. One can also legitimately think of the transplanted organ as a donation, with distinct implications in terms of the transplantation experience for the recipient. We explored the transplantation experience of 13 heart recipients in Australia. We conducted semistructured interviews, and our interpretative phenomenological analysis of the data resulted in three themes: deservingness, nuances of gratitude, and giving forward. Our results indicate that differences between organ-as-gift and organ-as-donation understandings of transplantation are more than merely semantic. Organ-as-donation understandings raise the issue of deservingness, with recipients’ assessments of their worthiness influencing their posttransplant experience of gratitude and, ultimately, the meaning(s) gleaned from their transplant experiences.
Details
- Title
- Deservingness and gratitude in the context of heart transplantation
- Authors/Creators
- G. O'Brien (Author/Creator)N. Donaghue (Author/Creator)I. Walker (Author/Creator)C. Wood (Author/Creator)
- Publication Details
- Qualitative Health Research, Vol.24(12), pp.1635-1647
- Publisher
- Sage Publications
- Identifiers
- 991005544969307891
- Copyright
- © 2014 The Authors
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Psychology and Exercise Science
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Citation topics
- 1 Clinical & Life Sciences
- 1.157 Organ Donation & Transplantation
- 1.157.708 Organ Donation
- Web Of Science research areas
- Information Science & Library Science
- Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
- Social Sciences, Biomedical
- Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary
- ESI research areas
- Social Sciences, general