Chronic Pain Management: A Qualitative Study of Elderly People's Preferred Coping Strategies and Barriers to Management.Lansbury G (School of Physiotherapy School of Physiotherapy is located in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. It is located in Mayo Hospital and is affiliated with King Edward Medical College. , Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney The University of Sydney, established in Sydney in 1850, is the oldest university in Australia. It is a member of Australia's "Group of Eight" Australian universities that are highly ranked in terms of their research performance. , Sydney, Australia), Disabil Rehabil. 2000;22:2-14. This qualitative study investigated elderly people's perspective on the pain and coping strategies The German Freudian psychoanalyst Karen Horney defined four so-called coping strategies to define interpersonal relations, one describing psychologically healthy individuals, the others describing neurotic states. that they used in order to achieve effective management of their pain. Six focus groups were used with 72 participants (58 women, 17 men) from 6 socioeconomically different suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Participants had to (1) be over 65 years old, (2) live at home, (3) speak English, and (4) have pain lasting for more than 3 months. Each focus group engaged in a 1-hour group discussion about personal experience with pain, what they did to manage it, barriers to pain management, and the attitudes of health professionals and others toward elderly people regarding their pain. In order to explore their pain management strategies in more detail, in-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 12 participants (8 women, 4 men). Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method, which involved analyzing and coding data immediately before another interview was conducted. The majority of the respondents' pain was caused by musculoskeletal musculoskeletal /mus·cu·lo·skel·e·tal/ (-skel´e-t'l) pertaining to or comprising the skeleton and muscles. mus·cu·lo·skel·e·tal adj. Relating to or involving the muscles and the skeleton. conditions (69%) followed by cardiovascular conditions (13%). Forty percent perceived their pain as moderate to severe. Elderly people preferred self-administered strategies to cope with their pain--including home remedies, massage, and informal coping techniques such as distraction--that were familiar to them. The least favorite strategies were medications, physical therapy, and exercise. Barriers to pain management included cost of services, transportation, side effects Side effects Effects of a proposed project on other parts of the firm. of medications, patients' beliefs about pain, and the attitudes of health care professionals. In summary, the author noted that elderly people tend to prefer self-administered physical and cognitive strategies rather than professional techniques. The author concluded that health care professionals who treat the elderly should take these findings into consideration in order to offer these patients more effective care. Harriet Wittink, PT, PhD, OCS OCS - Object Compatibility Standard New England New England, name applied to the region comprising six states of the NE United States—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The region is thought to have been so named by Capt. Medical Center Boston, Mass |
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