Healthcare professionals beliefs about pain

Healthcare professionals beliefs about pain

by Jacqueline Nabuala Walumbe -
Number of replies: 3

I spent a bit of time thinking about how people’s beliefs about pain have an impact. The main issue that I wanted to explore would be around exploring societal beliefs about pain. However, this would be an epic study. So I decided to break it down a bit. Having a look at the current discussions, I decided that it would be interesting to explore this from a health care professional’s perspective. Particularly exploring biomedical versus more sociological perspectives. Previous work has been done showing that health care professionals beliefs about back pain affect their advice to patients. This can be in direct contrast with current guidelines or clinical evidence (Houben et al 2005 available at doi:10.1016/j.ejpain.2004.05.002). This was done using a structured questionnaire which may have limited the breadth of responses that could have been explored. I would like to apply a more qualitative method to the same topic and widening it to be around beliefs about pain.

Information about pain can be complex and the ideas around chronic pain are sometimes counterintuitive. For example, that pain does not always indicate damage and that engaging in physical activity and social roles despite experiencing pain is still helpful. As this is in contrast to much popular and medical thinking it would be helpful to find out if this is in fact the case.

Research question

What are healthcare professionals’ beliefs about pain?

Topic Guide

General beliefs about pain

Beliefs around helpfulness of pain

The relationship between pain and damage

Mind and body dualism

Ideas around malingering and ‘psychosomatic’ pain

Effect of culture and society

I've left the ideas quite open so as not to narrow the scope of the eventual questions too much but to allow a broad exploration around these areas.

Thanks,

Jackie

In reply to Jacqueline Nabuala Walumbe

Re: Healthcare professionals beliefs about pain

by Moira Kelly -

Its nice to have two studies on pain - patients' perspectives (Filiz' study) and healthcare professionals beliefs.   The topics for the topic guide work well.  I would suggest now taking one of the topics and starting to think of how you might ask an open question.  I'm particularly drawn to the 'ideas around malingering and 'psychosomatic' pain.  How might you begin to explore that in an interview?   

In reply to Moira Kelly

Re: Healthcare professionals beliefs about pain

by Jacqueline Nabuala Walumbe -

I found this question quite hard to deal with. I came up with a number of questions. The first kind of questions directly asks

What is your understanding of the term malingering/ or psychosomatic pain?

This would allow an open exploration of the subject. However, as the topic is sensitive, it may be better to approach this in a more subtle manner. For example,

Have you encountered people who describe pain that doesn't seem to have an obvious pathological cause? 

And allow the topic to develop itself, whilst working with silences. I suppose this would be about using the interview itself as the materiaveto be analysed.

In reply to Jacqueline Nabuala Walumbe

Re: Healthcare professionals beliefs about pain

by Moira Kelly -

This is difficult but I think your last suggestion, to allow the topic to develop, is probably the best way.  I hope to illuminate how this can be a useful approach in lecture 4 about the illness experience.