Coping Revisited: The Relation Between Appraised Seriousness of an Event, Coping Responses and Adjustment to Illness

Abstract

Quality of life issues are a major concern for nurses caring for patients receiving chronic care. Nurses must constantly assess how patients are coping with and adjusting to their illness. The majority of the coping literature reports on the coping behaviours people use in handling stressful life events (Billings & Moos, 1981; Cohen & Lazarus, 1979; Felton,Revenson & Hinrichsen, 1984; Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). For nurses, the implication of such research has been to focus on subjects with more noticeable dysfunctional coping behaviours. However, neither the objective severity of the life event (such as major-minor burn injury) nor coping behaviours per se, have explained much variance in a person's adjustment to illness (Browne, Byrne & Brown, 1995; Felton, revenson & hinrichsen, 1984).