“Sense of Control”: Patients’ Experiences of Multimodal Pain Rehabilitation and its Impact in their Everyday Lives

OBJECTIVE: Long-lasting pain is a challenge for pa-tients’ everyday lives. The aim of this study was to examine how women and men who have participa-ted in multimodal pain rehabilitation experience its impact in their everyday lives. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Individual semi-structured interviews with 5 women and 3 men who had parti-cipated in multimodal pain rehabilitation at a clinic in Sweden, analysed using qualitative content ana-lysis. RESULTS: Participants perceived that their “sense of control” increased, which had a positive impact in their everyday life. Sense of control consisted of 3 categories: importance of the patient-provider re-lationship, knowledge gained (especially on body functions and medication), and pain in a social con-text. Three results were discussed in particular: (i) a trustful patient-provider relationship based on confidence in the provider’s expertise was a pre-requisite for pain acceptance; (ii) patients were aware of gender norms in healthcare; (iii) social support was not stressed as important to cope with pain. CONCLUSION: The importance of patients’ confidence in the provider’s expertise and patients’ awareness about gender norms need consideration in terms of the patient-provider encounter. The value of social support for pain rehabilitation was found to be less important compared with previous research; this should be explored further.