Pain communication: An agenda for communication researchers

ABSTRACT

Chronic pain is a significant and costly public health issue which is affected by political, organizational, and interpersonal social processes. Although medical pain scholarship has long examined communication constructs and processes, communication research and theory have remained largely absent. Scholars of communication must lend their research to this important issue to understand the role of communication in constituting and shaping the social and behavioral forces identified as priorities for advancing pain research. To facilitate this aim, I offer an agenda which lays theoretical groundwork in eight areas for scholars across the discipline to begin examining pain communication. These approaches hold promise for contributing fruitfully to both understandings of communication and the social experience of pain more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Pain communication
• relational turbulence
• resilience
• stigma
• narrative sensemaking
• patient-centered communication
• culture-centered approach

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge Drs. Patrice Buzzanell (Professor), Steven R. Wilson (Professor), and Marleah Dean Kruzel (Associate Professor) as well as Zhenyu Tian (Doctoral Candidate) of the University of South Florida for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.