Abstract
Aim: Examine how individuals on Teesside, diagnosed with mechanical back pain, socially construct the beliefs they hold about their back problem. The Spinal Assessment Clinic, at Middlesbrough General Hospital, uses a comprehensive and co-ordinated approach when assessing and treating individuals. More information demonstrating how people suffering with mechanical back pain are influenced by their psychosocial and cultural beliefs would enable the team to enhance the process. This research, is an anthropological examination of individual’s thoughts and beliefs as they absorb the information extended to them. This will be valuable in enhancing clinicians, sufferers and academics understanding of back pain. The research is still in the recruitment phase.
Method: This is an ethnographic study using a phenomenological framework to interpret the narrative and pictorial accounts given by individuals suffering with mechanical back pain as they proceed through their treatment at Spinal Assessment Clinic. Interviews are informal, the intention being to listen to each individuals life story and explore the way in which the narratives evolve, as they explain the lived experience of their pain.
Individuals are being recruited from the Spinal Assessment Clinic. One of the research methods utilised is that of pain imagery, with volunteers providing a drawing, representing their back pain.
Results: The drawings demonstrate that physical pain is not always viewed by individuals as a biological problem, it may be externalised or expressed as an emotion. The images are filled with vivid metaphors symbolising each individuals unique interpretation of their pain.
Conclusion: Initial results demonstrate there is a gap between the patients’ visualisation in their drawing and the narrative accounts provided.
Correspondence should be addressed to the editorial secretary: Dr Charles Pither, c/o British Orthopaedic Society, Royal College of Surgeons, 35-43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PN.
