Patients' experiences of breathlessness - from an ambulance care perspective

Individual lifeworld interviews involving 14 participants (12 women and 2 men). Inclusion criteria: being at least 18 years old, not suffering from any form of memory impairment from the time of care, experiencing severe breathlessness prompting ambulance care, and speaking fluent Swedish. This phenomenological study is based on the Reflective Lifeworld Research (RLR) approach, as described by Dahlberg, Dahlberg, and Nyström (2008). The aim of the RLR approach is to describe meanings according to the phenomenon studied. A lifeworld interview is phenomenon-oriented, which means that the focus is on the meanings of lived experiences. In line with the RLR approach, the interviews were initiated by inviting the participants to talk about their experience of the phenomenon. The interviews started with the question: “The day when you or another person next to you contacted the ambulance, can you describe how it felt to experience breathlessness?” Thereafter, follow-up questions further explored the phenomenon, such as “What do you mean by … ”, “Can you describe it more?” and “How did you feel in that situation?. The interviews lasted between 15 and 50 minutes (median 30 min.). Reference: Dahlberg, K., Dahlberg, H., & Nyström, M. (2008). Reflective lifeworld research. (2 ed.). Lund: Studentlitterature.