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We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors

Pain is a common symptom among cancer survivors, yet is rarely talked about by American Indians. Understanding the reasons for reduced communication by American Indian cancer survivors is important for healthcare providers, family members, and others providing treatment and support for cancer sympto...

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Autores principales: Hodge, Felicia Schanche, Itty, Tracy Line, Samuel-Nakamura, Christine, Cadogan, Mary
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7409157/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32708860
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers12071932
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author Hodge, Felicia Schanche
Itty, Tracy Line
Samuel-Nakamura, Christine
Cadogan, Mary
author_facet Hodge, Felicia Schanche
Itty, Tracy Line
Samuel-Nakamura, Christine
Cadogan, Mary
author_sort Hodge, Felicia Schanche
collection PubMed
description Pain is a common symptom among cancer survivors, yet is rarely talked about by American Indians. Understanding the reasons for reduced communication by American Indian cancer survivors is important for healthcare providers, family members, and others providing treatment and support for cancer symptoms. Thirteen focus groups with Southwest American Indian adult cancer survivors were audiotaped and transcribed as part of a randomized intervention to remove barriers to cancer symptom management. Constant comparative methods were employed in the data analysis, topic categories were grouped for comparison, and final assessment followed Grounded Theory methods. Findings were categorized into two major groupings: communication with family members and communication with health care providers. Within these two groupings, three themes emerged to describe cancer pain experiences and communication barriers: (1) We don’t talk about it, (2) Respect for healthcare providers; and (3) Culturally prohibitive topics on death and pain experiences. Not talking about their cancer diagnosis and cancer-related pain leaves many American Indian cancer survivors without much-needed social support, contributing to reduced treatment compliance and access to healthcare. Findings have implications for educational interventions and quality of life improvement for American Indian and other underrepresented communities.
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spelling pubmed-74091572020-08-26 We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors Hodge, Felicia Schanche Itty, Tracy Line Samuel-Nakamura, Christine Cadogan, Mary Cancers (Basel) Article Pain is a common symptom among cancer survivors, yet is rarely talked about by American Indians. Understanding the reasons for reduced communication by American Indian cancer survivors is important for healthcare providers, family members, and others providing treatment and support for cancer symptoms. Thirteen focus groups with Southwest American Indian adult cancer survivors were audiotaped and transcribed as part of a randomized intervention to remove barriers to cancer symptom management. Constant comparative methods were employed in the data analysis, topic categories were grouped for comparison, and final assessment followed Grounded Theory methods. Findings were categorized into two major groupings: communication with family members and communication with health care providers. Within these two groupings, three themes emerged to describe cancer pain experiences and communication barriers: (1) We don’t talk about it, (2) Respect for healthcare providers; and (3) Culturally prohibitive topics on death and pain experiences. Not talking about their cancer diagnosis and cancer-related pain leaves many American Indian cancer survivors without much-needed social support, contributing to reduced treatment compliance and access to healthcare. Findings have implications for educational interventions and quality of life improvement for American Indian and other underrepresented communities. MDPI 2020-07-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7409157/ /pubmed/32708860 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers12071932 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Hodge, Felicia Schanche
Itty, Tracy Line
Samuel-Nakamura, Christine
Cadogan, Mary
We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors
title We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors
title_full We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors
title_fullStr We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors
title_full_unstemmed We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors
title_short We Don’t Talk about It: Cancer Pain and American Indian Survivors
title_sort we don’t talk about it: cancer pain and american indian survivors
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7409157/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32708860
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers12071932
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