Complex interaction explored
Wheelchair users identity and self-perception, interpersonal relationships and the experience of pain and its management all combine in a complex interaction to determine an individual’s quality of life experience.
Abstract
This study investigated how wheelchair-using individuals with paraplegia and chronic pain make sense of the factors associated with quality of life based on interviews using photo-elicitation and interpretative phenomenological analysis.
Three superordinate themes emerged in the analysis:
- experiencing quality of life through the perception of self and identity
- interpersonal relationships as facilitators and barriers to quality of life and
- life in a wheelchair: pain experience and management.
Quality of life for those living with paraplegia and chronic pain is experienced as a complex interaction across several life domains. The use of photographs may improve the communication of pain-related experiences and understanding by healthcare staff.
SOURCE: J Health Psychol. 2017 Dec 1:1359105317750254. doi: 10.1177/1359105317750254. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 29284303
‘I am free in my wheelchair but pain does have a say in it though’: The meaning and experience of quality of life when living with paraplegia and chronic pain.
Hughes M1, Burton AE1, Dempsey RC1.
1 Staffordshire University, UK.