The palliative management of fungating malignant wounds – generalising from multiple-case study data using a system of reasoning

The project focused on individual experiences, from 45 participants, of living with a fungating wound and the performance of wound dressings in reducing the impact of the wounds on daily living. A case study design was adopted. This posed a key methodological challenge in the form of the contentious epistemological issue, characterised in the literature as the ‘nomothetic–idiographic dilemma’. This issue concerns the nature of knowledge generated from an individual case and its generalisability. A system of reasoning was adopted as the analytic strategy, within a theory-driven evaluation, to abstract general issues from the case study data to construct explanations of symptom control and dressing performance. The latter were generalised beyond the individual cases with the use of theory. This paper focuses on the methodological issues that are inherent in the use of a case study design and the nature of the evidence generated. The system of reasoning is described and illustrated using data from a single participant with advanced uterine cancer and a fungating nodule in the groin.