Salvaging quality of life in ethnically diverse patients with advanced HIV/AIDS

This article reports a grounded theory of Salvaging Quality of Life generated in Phase 1 of an instrument development study that aims to generate and then validate an ethnically sensitive quality-of-life (QoL) measure for patients with late-stage HIV/AIDS. A purposive sample of patient participants and family/significant-other caregivers was interviewed, and six focus groups with expert nurse clinicians were conducted yielding more than 2,000 pages of textual data. Analysis using the constant comparative method revealed that patients who are "living with dying" salvage QoL from remnants through three subprocesses: preserving, in which patients attempt to maintain QoL intact and unaltered; sustaining, in which patients suspend the demise of selected dimensions of their QoL; and redeeming, in which patients come to terms with quality of death and surrender QoL issues.