Concept of coping Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Concept of coping - Essay Example This paper aims at providing an exploration of the concept of coping and the way it impacts the lives of persons with chronic illness. The attributes of this concept and nursing intervention are discussed with relevance to the book, At the Will of the Body written by Arthur Frank (2002). Furthermore, the paper discusses how the connotations in the book influence nursing practices, in particular to the concept of coping. Frank (2002) details the health challenges he faced, reflecting on his journey of pain, endurance and illness experiences that transformed him to cope with the traumatic situation. One of the concepts of coping strategies that he stresses is the process of coping with grief as it is essential for patients with chronic illness to move to the stage of renewal and recovery from their emotional burdens. Frank clearly expresses how patients are disturbed and affected, when their mourning is limited, and what this restriction does to their emotions when disregarded by the external factors. His distinction between disease and illness sheds light on the fact that treatment of the disease of the body is not the same as the care for the illness experience of the patients living in the collapsed state. â€Å"Illness is the experience of living through the disease† (Frank, 2002, p. 13). Frank’s illness expresses the importance of sharing and emotional support, and what happens whe n it is delivered efficiently for the patients by their caregivers and medical professionals. Coping can be defined as the â€Å"constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person† (Contrada & Baum, 2010, p. 197). Coping is a holistic phenomenon which involves physical, psychological, emotional and social perspectives that possibly impacts individual behaviors. Moreover, coping