In a qualitative framework, research based on interviews often seeks to penetrate social life beyond appearance and manifest meanings. This requires the researcher to be immersed in the research field, to establish continuing, fruitful relationships with respondents and through theoretical contemplation to address the research problem in depth. Therefore a small number of cases (less than 20, say) will facilitate the researcher’s close association with the respondents, and enhance the validity of fine-grained, in-depth inquiry in naturalistic settings. Epistemologically prior to these considerations, however, is the explanatory status of such research. From a realist standpoint, here concept formation through induction and analysis aims to clarify the nature of some specific situations in the social world, to discover what features there are in them and to account, however partially, for those features being as they are. Since such a research project scrutinizes the dynamic qualities of a situation (rather than elucidating the proportionate relationships among its constituents), the issue of sample size - as well as representativeness - has little bearing on the project’s basic logic. This article presents this argument in detail, with an example drawn from a study of persons with a past history of cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Chemotherapy outpatients have significant unmet needs following treatment, indicating an urgent need for improved continuity of care and better integration of primary and tertiary health care services.

This article concerns persons who live in uncertainty following an earlier diagnosis of (and completed treatment for) cancer. Fear of recurrence of the disease underlies the uncertainty and the attendant perception of being profoundly endangered, more 'at risk' than anyone else. Such a reflective assessment engenders a sense of separation from the everyday 'practical consciousness' that seems effortlessly to be shared by 'ordinary' others. The mismatch between the interaction order and individual psychology gives rise to interpersonal emotional dissonance, which forms a significant aspect of the chronic suffering contained in the 'at-risk illness' experience of cancer survivors. The article examines the emotional patterns involved in their situation and seeks to elucidate the pain that accompanies their alienation from the lifeworld in which nonetheless they must continue to dwell.

This article draws on personal accounts of women’s thoughts and feelings following mastectomy. The analysis of the material obtained in multiple, focused interviews has revealed two major themes in these accounts: on the one hand, the loss of bodily symmetry (one of the basic cultural criteria of physical beauty) was deeply felt; and on the other, peace of mind (a characteristic of psychological beauty) was permanently disturbed by the fear of the recurrence of cancer and the possibility of death. While the asymmetrical body is a potentially (socially) visible problem of presentation and representation, the fear of recurrence is a fear of the workings of the body that are not visible and not knowable. A woman who has had a breast removed will concern herself, usually in isolation, with her secret unpredictable interior. This fear will be her very own preoccupation, not only because in our society death and disease are deemed threatening and ugly – but also because the uncertainty of the health-status of a woman following mastectomy is socially (as well as medically) veiled by discourse which assumes that she is ‘well’. Though a woman may feel well, she fears that her body may not be well; yet her fear is necessarily silenced through both social denial and incongruity with experience. The article explores in some detail the nature of the stress that inevitably results in this ill-understood, complex situation.

The experience of myeloma is increasingly characterized by issues associated with chronic disease and 'survivorship'. It is important for nurses working with people with myeloma to understand the overwhelming nature of illness work in this context. Nurses can put in place supportive measures to address the two main 'drivers' of this work: constant risk to well-being of survivors (including carers) and the recurrent need to manage emotions in social interactions.