Nurses are in a unique position to coordinate
interdisciplinary services and follow-up. One way to improve coping in chronically ill patients is through
education.62 Hospitalization provides an opportunity
to provide supportive and informative care and rehabilitation for these patients. Consequently, when a patient’s physical situation has stabilized, a nurse might encourage him or her to reconstruct and describe the situation with breathing problems, focusing on what happened before hospitalization, which emotions he or she felt, his or her personal appraisals of the situation, and which thoughts and actions occurred during the episode. Moreover, as the tendency to learn from previous experiences was indicative of the absence of psychological distress, the present findings suggest that nurses should emphasize patient learning through successful coping with past experiences. The nurse, in investigating the patient’s resources, could advise
how a similar situation could be managed better in
the future, thereby supporting the patient’s problem-
focused coping resources. In addition to minimizing
a patient’s propensity for threatening and harmful appraisals and passive coping, a nurse could encourage meaning-based coping and enhance positive emotions.63 Further research is needed to refine and test this type of intervention strategy as applied in the clinical situation, and to determine its possible effect on relieving psychological distress.