Questions that individuals with spinal cord injury have regarding their chronic pain: A qualitative study

Abstract

Purpose. To explore the questions that community-dwelling individuals with a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) have regarding their chronic pain and to identify their preferred methods of acquiring this information.

Method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 individuals experiencing SCI-related chronic pain. Qualitative content analysis was used to identify participants' questions about their pain and to organise them according to emergent themes.

Results. Six themes pertaining to chronic pain were identified. These included: (1) cause, (2) communication, (3) expectation, (4) getting information, (5) management and (6) other's experience with chronic pain. Participants described using a variety of sources to obtain information about chronic pain including health care providers, other SCI-consumers and the Internet. Participants preferred to have chronic pain information available to them on an as needed basis.

Conclusions. Individuals with SCI have numerous questions about their chronic pain and use a variety of information sources to answer them. Many are dissatisfied with the level of knowledge that family physicians have about SCI-related chronic pain. This study provides valuable information from the consumer's perspective, which can be used to develop interventions to help health care professionals and consumers manage SCI-related chronic pain.

Keywords:

• Spinal cord injury
• chronic pain
• self-management
• consumer preference
• qualitative
• knowledge translation

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation. Dr. Hunter was funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Paraplegic Association Ontario. This research was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a MScPT degree at the University of Toronto (CN, JM, MD, SD and BS). The authors would like to thank Shauna Petrie for her valuable assistance as an SCI-consumer, as well as the Canadian Paraplegic Association for publishing our recruitment flyer in their ‘Outspoken Magazine’. We would also like to thank Ravin Persaud from the fitness centre at Lyndhurst Centreâ for assisting us in informing participants about our study. Finally, we would like to especially thank the SCI-consumers who gave willingly of their time to participant in this study.