A qualitative account of pain enactment with persons in chronic pain
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A qualitative account of pain enactment with persons in chronic pain
IRAS ID
158248
Contact name
Leigh Rooney
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Durham University
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Chronic pain is sometimes a condition with no medical explanation. Yet chronic pain patients often urgently seek to ‘pin down’ what their pain is, causing frustration and suffering for themselves, their families and health care practitioners when this isn’t forthcoming. This thinking contains a number of assumptions: (1) that some entity ‘pain’ exists, (2) can be defined, and (3) can be removed once defined. Such thinking often involves some vague idea of the nature of the pain (e.g. biological, psychological, social), making it all the more tantalizingly frustrating when it can’t be properly figured out.
The current study considers an alternative way of thinking. Rather than assuming that there exists some set definition of pain, it suggests a person’s pain is continually redefined in their everyday lives as they ‘enact’ it (talk about it, think about it, write about it, etc). It assumes any ‘reality’ is fragile, changeable, and multiple. It suggests recognising this means a person in pain doesn’t need to be ‘stuck’ to suffer within one particular version of what pain is. This alternative way of thinking can be found in techniques such as ‘mindfulness’, which attempts to cultivate this attitude through meditation in order to reduce the suffering of pain.
The current study feels the first way of thinking dominates academic and clinical approaches to chronic pain, and by extension that of chronic pain patients. It seeks to provide an academic account of pain using the second way of thinking in order to help us reflect on how ‘fixed’ and certain realities of pain really are. This account will chart the various ways a person’s pain is enacted in a series of one-on-one, open-ended interviews with the researcher, paying attention to continual redefinition. It will include five chronic pain patients, each undergoing five 60-90 minute interviews.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NE/0097
Date of REC Opinion
24 Apr 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion