Whiplash patients' experience of a multimodal rehabilitation programme and its usefulness one year later

Abstract

Objective. The study aimed to explore and analyse how, 1 year after completing a rehabilitation programme, persons with long-term pain due to whiplash-associated disorders (WAD) experienced their participation, and what knowledge and strategies they had gained from it for handling their daily occupations.

Methods. The study had an emergent design. Thematised research interviews were conducted with nine informants. The results were analysed according to the constant-comparison grounded-theory method.

Results. Data analysis resulted in one core category, ‘learning to manage WAD, a rehabilitation process’, and three associated categories: ‘chaos in life’, ‘a light in the tunnel’ and ‘managing long-term pain’. The core category and the categories describe the process the informants underwent from how they experienced life when starting rehabilitation to one year after completion.

Conclusion. The informants described living with long-term whiplash-associated pain as ‘chaos’ before the rehabilitation programme. Participation helped them realise that there was a possible way for them to control their pain, regain their daily occupation and return to work. One year after rehabilitation the informants had started to accept their situation and regain occupations and life roles.

Keywords:

• Whiplash-associated disorder (WAD)
• chronic pain
• grounded theory

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Karolinska Hospital, Solna, Stockholm and the University Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Danderyd Hospital, Stockholm. The authors specially want to thank the former patients in the WAD rehabilitation programme who contributed with accounts of their life situations.