Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jun;35(7):793-806.
doi: 10.1177/10497323241285959. Epub 2024 Oct 18.

Collaborative Autoethnography of Cancer Patients' Dynamic Sense of Agency

Eeva Aromaa  1 , Päivi Eriksson  1 , Satu Koskinen  2
Affiliations

Collaborative Autoethnography of Cancer Patients' Dynamic Sense of Agency

Eeva Aromaa et al. Qual Health Res. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

Through collaborative autoethnography, we studied shifts in cancer patients' sense of agency and the meaning of cancer during the diagnostic and treatment phases. This article contributes to the illness management literature by adopting sense of agency perspective that provides new understanding of retrospective interpretation of cancer patients' agency. The authors' experiences of receiving cancer diagnoses and a related, collectively written story illustrate how relational and contextual elements facilitate rapid shifts in cancer patients' sense of agency and illness management. The findings illustrate shifts in the sense of agency as a collaborative and reflexive process between cognitive, emotional, and bodily constraints and adjustments. We demonstrate how shifts in patients' sense of agency and respective changes in meanings attached to cancer were shaped by near ones, healthcare actors, and other cancer patients, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and the fear of military conflict due to Finland neighbor Russia's war on Ukraine. Furthermore, the study illustrates how shifts in sense of agency shape and are shaped by changes in the understanding of cancer as either a secondary issue, ambiguous stranger, travel companion, or enemy.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Finland; cancer; collaborative autoethnography; illness management; patient story; sense of agency; threat of war.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Acke E., Meganck R. (2022). For one can always start something new: An Arendtian-psychoanalytic reflection on patient agency. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 39(4), 295–301. 10.1037/pap0000412 - DOI
    1. Adler J. M., Skalina L. M., McAdams D. P. (2008). The narrative reconstruction of psychotherapy and psychological health. Psychotherapy Research, 18(6), 719–734. 10.1080/10503300802326020 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bamberg M. (2011). Narrative discourse. In Chapelle C. A. (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp. 1–6). Wiley-Blackwell. 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0851 - DOI
    1. Barker K. K. (2010). The social construction of illness: Medicalization and contested illness. In Bird C. E., Conrad P., Fremont A. M., Timmermans S. (Eds.), Handbook of medical sociology (pp. 147–162). Vanderbilt University Press.
    1. Bochner A., Ellis C. (2016). Evocative autoethnography: Writing lives and telling stories. Routledge.