Metaphors of the Adult Asthma Experience in a Suburban Area

Metaphor is one element of language capable of capturing human’s perception of reality. Nursing care can improve as patients’ perceptions of their illnesses are better understood. Realizing how patients with asthma, their family members, and the nurses caring for them perceive the asthma experience was the goal of this study. The authors used a qualitative research method implementing systematic metaphorical analysis to analyze the data. The authors identified an encompassing metaphor titled: Owning and Winning the Asthma War. The results of this study enhanced understanding of the asthma experience and contributed to metaphorical analysis as a valid way of knowing, understanding, and describing in nursing and human sciences.