A meta-ethnography of patients' experiences of chronic pelvic pain: struggling to construct chronic pelvic pain as 'real'

Francine Toye, Francine Toyé, Kate Seers, Barker K, Karen Barker
Journal of advanced nursing · 2014 · vol. 70(12) , pp. 2713–2727 · doi:10.1111/jan.12485 · PMID:25081990 · W2131579698
Review OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 29 in-corpus citations
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This meta-ethnography integrated qualitative findings to reveal patients' struggles constructing chronic pelvic pain as real due to its unpredictable nature, secrecy, and validation by diagnosis.

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Abstract

AIM: To review systematically and integrate the findings of qualitative research to increase our understanding of patients' experiences of chronic pelvic pain. BACKGROUND: Chronic pelvic pain is a prevalent pain condition with a high disease burden for men and women. Its multifactorial nature makes it challenging for clinicians and patients. DESIGN: Synthesis of qualitative research using meta-ethnography. DATA SOURCES: Five electronic bibliographic databases from inception until March 2014 supplemented by citation tracking. Of 488 papers retrieved, 32 met the review aim. REVIEW METHODS: Central to meta-ethnography is identifying 'concepts' and developing a conceptual model through constant comparison. Concepts are the primary data of meta-ethnography. Two team members read each paper to identify and collaboratively describe the concepts. We next compared concepts across studies and organized them into categories with shared meaning. Finally, we developed a conceptual model, or line of argument, to explain the conceptual categories. RESULTS: Our findings incorporate the following categories into a conceptual model: relentless and overwhelming pain; threat to self; unpredictability, struggle to construct pain as normal or pathological; a culture of secrecy; validation by diagnosis; ambiguous experience of health care; elevation of experiential knowledge and embodiment of knowledge through a community. CONCLUSION: The innovation of our model is to demonstrate, for the first time, the central struggle to construct 'pathological' vs. 'normal' chronic pelvic pain, a struggle that is exacerbated by a culture of secrecy. More research is needed to explore men's experience and to compare this with women's experience.

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Condition tags

endometriosischronic_pelvic_pain

MeSH descriptors

Attitude to Health Attitude to Health Chronic Pain Chronic Pain Pelvic Pain Adolescent Adolescent Adult Adult Aged Aged Aged, 80 and over Aged, 80 and over Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Causality Causality Chronic Pain Chronic Pain Chronic Pain

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (67)

Cited by (32)

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License: CC0 · commercial use OK