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Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives
BACKGROUND: This paper presents an analysis of 32 narratives written by patients waiting for assessment at a transgender health clinic (THC) in England. Narratives are autobiographical free texts, designed to allow patients to describe in their own words their experiences of their gender identity an...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8077074/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33629441 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hex.13222 |
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author | Zottola, Angela Jones, Lucy Pilnick, Alison Mullany, Louise Pierre Bouman, Walter Arcelus, Jon |
author_facet | Zottola, Angela Jones, Lucy Pilnick, Alison Mullany, Louise Pierre Bouman, Walter Arcelus, Jon |
author_sort | Zottola, Angela |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: This paper presents an analysis of 32 narratives written by patients waiting for assessment at a transgender health clinic (THC) in England. Narratives are autobiographical free texts, designed to allow patients to describe in their own words their experiences of their gender identity and/or transition prior to a clinic appointment, as part of the assessment process. OBJECTIVE: Narratives were analysed to identify actions prospective patients had taken to manage their (usually lengthy) waiting times, so that these ‘coping strategies’ could be shared with future patients. DESIGN: Corpus linguistic methodology was utilized to identify common patterns across the whole corpus of text‐based data, augmented with more detailed sociolinguistic analysis of individual narratives. RESULTS: There are broad commonalities in the way the transition experience is described across the corpus in terms of presentation of key experiences and feelings. There are specific descriptions of a number of recurring coping strategies, both positive and negative. CONCLUSION: The empowerment value of writing these narratives may be limited; the existence of recurring key features suggests that patients may feel they have to present their experiences in certain ways to be accepted for treatment. However, dissemination of some positive coping strategies may help future clients of THCs to better cope with waiting times, as well as assisting practitioners in THCs in supporting their patients during this wait. PATIENT/PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: The clinic's Service Users’ Research Advisory Group contributed to formulating the objective and design of the study. Results were presented at the clinic's annual PPI conference. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8077074 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80770742021-04-29 Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives Zottola, Angela Jones, Lucy Pilnick, Alison Mullany, Louise Pierre Bouman, Walter Arcelus, Jon Health Expect Original Research Papers BACKGROUND: This paper presents an analysis of 32 narratives written by patients waiting for assessment at a transgender health clinic (THC) in England. Narratives are autobiographical free texts, designed to allow patients to describe in their own words their experiences of their gender identity and/or transition prior to a clinic appointment, as part of the assessment process. OBJECTIVE: Narratives were analysed to identify actions prospective patients had taken to manage their (usually lengthy) waiting times, so that these ‘coping strategies’ could be shared with future patients. DESIGN: Corpus linguistic methodology was utilized to identify common patterns across the whole corpus of text‐based data, augmented with more detailed sociolinguistic analysis of individual narratives. RESULTS: There are broad commonalities in the way the transition experience is described across the corpus in terms of presentation of key experiences and feelings. There are specific descriptions of a number of recurring coping strategies, both positive and negative. CONCLUSION: The empowerment value of writing these narratives may be limited; the existence of recurring key features suggests that patients may feel they have to present their experiences in certain ways to be accepted for treatment. However, dissemination of some positive coping strategies may help future clients of THCs to better cope with waiting times, as well as assisting practitioners in THCs in supporting their patients during this wait. PATIENT/PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: The clinic's Service Users’ Research Advisory Group contributed to formulating the objective and design of the study. Results were presented at the clinic's annual PPI conference. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-02-24 2021-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8077074/ /pubmed/33629441 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hex.13222 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Health Expectations published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Research Papers Zottola, Angela Jones, Lucy Pilnick, Alison Mullany, Louise Pierre Bouman, Walter Arcelus, Jon Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives |
title | Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives |
title_full | Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives |
title_fullStr | Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives |
title_full_unstemmed | Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives |
title_short | Identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives |
title_sort | identifying coping strategies used by patients at a transgender health clinic through analysis of free‐text autobiographical narratives |
topic | Original Research Papers |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8077074/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33629441 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hex.13222 |
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