Changes in chronic pain experience V 1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
How does learning to self-manage chronic pain change the identity of sufferers and their illness experience? A multimodal study
IRAS ID
186353
Contact name
Isabella E Nizza
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Birkbeck, University of London
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Existing literature suggests that the effects of chronic pain on identity hold the key to understanding the extreme distress experienced by these patients. This research aims to explore how the sense of self and its relationship with pain evolves when chronic pain sufferers decide to attend a multidisciplinary pain service and participate in a pain management programme (PMP). To facilitate a deeper level of description of the difficult-to-communicate experience of pain and its effects, multimodal data will be gathered, with interviews guided by participant-generated drawings.
Twenty participants will be recruited from a community pain management service in East Kent. They will be interviewed at three time points: before they attend a PMP, just after they finish the programme and six months after the end of the programme. Before each interview, participants will be asked to draw a picture of their pain and of themselves. The pictures will then be discussed during the interview and will act as a prompt for participants to discuss their experience with chronic pain and how it makes them feel. During later interviews there will also be an opportunity for participants to review their earlier pictures and reflect on whether and how their experience has changed as a result of their attending the PMP and, more generally, the pain management service.
Findings from this research can deepen the clinical understanding of a key aspect of chronic pain, a condition affecting a large portion of the population. Additionally the methods adopted by this research will expand the knowledge base available on how to use visual methods to investigate lived experience from a phenomenological perspective and will provide insight on the transformative effect that art as a research method can have for participants.REC name
London - Stanmore Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/1872
Date of REC Opinion
15 Oct 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion