Practitioners’ use of shared concepts in anthroposophic pain rehabilitation

Abstract

Purpose: To elucidate the meaning of anthroposophic practitioners’ conceptualizations of caring for persons living with chronic pain.

Methods: Interviews were conducted with 15 practitioners working with rehabilitation of persons with chronic pain at an anthroposophic hospital in Sweden. The interviews were analyzed using a phenomenological hermeneutical method.

Findings: When practitioners discussed patient care, they used a shared language with particular concepts. Concepts, such as “trauma,” “self,” and “life intention,” were interpreted as a means of understanding persons with pain and their current life situation. The meaning of the concepts also had explicit or implicit implications for the caring process, e.g., the concept “caring shelter” referred to an inherent and continuous part of the caring culture enabling patients’ own exploration of their life and suffering and the meaning of their pain in the context of their lives.

Conclusions: The practitioners’ use of a conceptual language is here interpreted as a sign of a shared “caring culture” that enabled them to understand patients and their suffering from an existential perspective. A reciprocal understanding within a caring culture may extend the abilities of practitioners to engage in a dialog with patients about life and health as intertwined with the phenomenon of pain.

Implications for rehabilitation

• In the rehabilitation process, health practitioners’ language may contribute to shaping a caring culture that emphasis an understanding of patients’ needs of health.

• Shared concepts in rehabilitation might increase health practitioners’ possibilities to support patients from broader and more personalized perspectives, involving not only biopsychosocial aspects but also existential dimensions.

• The shared conceptual understanding of anthroposophic practitioners in this study may serve as an example to practitioners in other pain rehabilitation settings, developing a contextual understanding of their central concepts, and caring values.

Keywords:

• Integrative health care
• anthroposophic care
• caring relationship
• caring culture
• pain rehabilitation

Acknowledgments

We would like acknowledge the Integrative care science center and the Vidar clinic for valuable collaboration and the Ekhaga Foundation, Sweden, for funding. We would also like to thank Torkel Falkenberg for valuable contributions to the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.