Abstract: Objective To deeply understand disease experience and treatment expectation of patients with primary glaucoma, and to provide reference for formulating comprehensive psychosomatic nursing strategy. Methods Semi-structured interview was conducted in twelve patients with primary glaucoma hospitalized in Shanxi Eye Hospital from February to June 2023. The data were collated and analyzed by NVivo20.0 and Colaizzi method of data analysis. Results There were 3 themes and 10 sub-themes, which included experiencing multiple challenges (complex physical experience, unbalanced psychological experience, frustration in daily life); disease cognition and differences in coping (lack of disease self-cognition, negative avoidance, positive coping); treatment expectation (treatment method expectation, outcome expectation, recovery process expectation, negative and unrealistic expectation of the treatment). Conclusion Patients with primary glaucoma suffer from excessive physical and mental stress and have inadequate coping styles but various expectations for disease treatment. It is suggested that medical staff should pay attention to the disease burden of patients and help establish positive and reasonable treatment expectations to improve the happiness and quality of life of patients.

Key words: primary glaucoma, disease experience, treatment expectation, qualitative study