Healing Transcendence: Social Media Use by Persons in the Transplant Journey

An increasing number of individuals are looking for health information,
interacting with health care providers, and participating in health-related online support
groups The virtual landscape of the internet offers the opportunity for individuals to
establish contact and relationships with persons having similar health concerns anywhere,
anytime The phenomenon of health-related social media use generated an interest in why
persons in the transplant journey chose to participate in an online support community,
how they interacted and made use of the online community, and how this knowledge
could assist nursing in improving care for this growing population A six month sample
of internet postings from an international transplant-related social media site was
analyzed using an inductive qualitative content analysis adapted from Graneheim and
Lundman (2003) within the theoretical lens of Unitary Caring Science (Smith, 1999) The
study provided a unique perspective of how members used the social media support group The synthesis of four pandimensional interconnected patterns, expressing
emotions, sharing experiences, exchanging information, and offering reciprocal support
lead to a theme of being known and understood Healing transcendence emerged as a
unitary transformative metatheme that reflected the holistic nature of the member
interaction in the online support experience