Ideas and perspectives
The trajectory
The sociologists Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin (1990) write about the processes of ‘managing’ patients
who have chronic illnesses as they go through the trajectory of their condition.
This trajectory can be brief or extended; each of the stages may well have quite different timelines. It starts
with the patient’s growing awareness that all is not well, to the diagnosis of the condition, to a state of crisis
for the patient, to the stage of acute (i.e., not long lasting) illness, from stability of the condition to instability,
to deterioration and ultimately the death of the patient. Strauss’ work was very influential in the
development of understanding amongst medical and nursing staff of appropriate care interventions at each
of these stages.